{"id":27426,"date":"2018-10-04T11:24:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T10:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=27426"},"modified":"2018-10-04T11:24:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T10:24:42","slug":"boxer-amir-khan-facetimes-convicted-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/04\/boxer-amir-khan-facetimes-convicted-killer\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxer Amir Khan Facetimes Convicted Killer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boxer Amir Khan has sparked an outrage by chatting to a convicted killer in jail via FaceTime and telling him to ‘Keep your chin up bro.’<\/p>\n

Khan had a FaceTime call with\u00a0Philip Merry, who is serving eight years for manslaughter after beating to death father-of-five\u00a0Steve McKinnon in a pub fight in Leicester in 2014.<\/p>\n

Merry, 31, posted a screenshot of the call on his\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0story with the caption:\u00a0‘When Amir Khan Facetimes you to say ‘Keep your chin up bro’. Big love bro’.<\/p>\n

Mr McKinnon’s widow Clare told\u00a0The Sun<\/a>\u00a0: “Amir Khan is meant to be a role model.<\/p>\n

“It’s disgusting he would back someone like Merry.<\/p>\n

“He should be round here telling me to keep my chin up after what I’ve been through.<\/p>\n

“Merry is meant to be in prison serving his punishment, not getting morale-boosting messages from the likes of Khan. How’s Merry even got a phone in prison?”<\/p>\n

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “This behaviour is unacceptable and we have had this account taken down.”<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Khan said: “We can confirm that Amir was provided with a mobile phone from a fan and asked to speak to his friend (something that occurs frequently).<\/p>\n

“There was no prior notice that his friend was in prison or had been convicted of such a serious crime.<\/p>\n

“To Amir’s knowledge, he has never intentionally used his mobile telephone to FaceTime anyone in prison.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boxer Amir Khan has sparked an outrage by chatting to a convicted killer in jail via FaceTime and telling him to ‘Keep your chin up bro.’ Khan had a FaceTime call with\u00a0Philip Merry, who is serving eight years for manslaughter after beating to death father-of-five\u00a0Steve McKinnon in a pub fight in Leicester in 2014. Merry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3],"tags":[236,1592,1593],"class_list":["post-27426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","tag-amir-khan","tag-boxer","tag-philip-merry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}