UK extremism report errors not corrected, investigation finds

LONDON: An incorrect claim made in a major report into UK counterterrorism strategy that no right-wing attacks have taken place in recent years has failed to be addressed by officials.

The Independent said the report failed to mention a number of incidents in which attackers had stated a desire to kill Muslims.

Report author William Shawcross wrote that the Prevent strategy should “address all extremist ideologies proportionately according to the threat each represents. Since this review was commissioned in 2019, six terrorist attacks have blighted our nation. All these attacks were Islamist in nature.”

However, The Independent said it identified eight attacks in the timeframe referred to, and only five had involved Islamist extremists.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman previously welcomed the report’s findings, saying she accepted all 34 of its recommendations.

“This independent review has identified areas where real reform is required,” she said. “I wholeheartedly accept all recommendations and am committed to quickly delivering wholesale change.”

When challenged by The Independent, a Home Office spokesperson refused to say why the error had not been corrected.

In March 2019, Vincent Fuller attacked multiple people in the town of Stanwell in England, stabbing one man and shouting: “All Muslims should die, white supremacists rule.”

He was arrested by counterterrorism police, and the judge at his trial called the attack a “terrorist act” when sentencing him.

In October 2022, a man threw a firebomb at an asylum seeker processing center in Dover before killing himself.

Posting online before the incident, the attacker Andrew Leak said he wanted to “obliterate Muslim children.”