The anti-mass migration riots in Britain should be treated like terrorism, the UK’s former head of Counter Terrorism Policing has declared.
Anil Kanti “Neil” Basu, who served as the top counter-terror police officer from 2018 and 2021, said that some of the violence seen over the past week in the United Kingdom in response to the killing of three young girls and mass migration more broadly has “crossed the line into terrorism.”
“I think we have seen serious acts of violence designed to cause terror to a section of our community,” he told the BBC.
Basu, who defended the violent Black Lives Matter uprising in 2020 as “legitimate anger,” added that his successors should look “very closely” at the definition of terrorism when prosecuting those involved in riots now.
The former Counter Terrorism Policing chief also argued that social media companies and users should be held culpable for the outbreak of violence on the streets and suggested that laws should be made more stringent.
Basu, who, during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, called for those spreading anti-vaccine “misinformation” to be punished, singled out anti-grooming gang activist Tommy Robinson for allegedly stoking the riots in England, despite having left the country prior to their outbreak.
Basu said that Robinson has been able to “inflame and toxify debates and create the kind of mayhem we’re seeing” while not actually breaking any laws, so therefore the laws should be changed.
“If he is not crossing a legal threshold, then the government and society need to consider if that threshold is in the wrong place,” he said.
In contrast to Basu’s comparisons of riots to terrorism, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson urged the authorities to tone down the heated rhetoric.
“‘Standing army’, ‘ramping up the CJS (Criminal Justice System)’ and ‘full force of the law’ – I rather think communities expect the full force of the law to be used against thugs irrespective of who’s motivating them,” he said.
Stephenson noted, however, that the full force of the law must be applied evenly, including “all the thugs who mistakenly use fictitious banners of protecting communities to come out and cause damage,” in reference to the gangs of Muslim vigilantes roaming the streets over the past week.
Sir Paul also specifically criticised the use of the term “far-right” to characterise the rioters, most of whom come from deep Labour Party strongholds in the country.
“This is the ugly face of racism, racism isn’t confined to left or right… Most of the thugs involved in this couldn’t spell right or left, let alone think politically,” he said.
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