Scottish police charge man after apparent anti-Muslim attacks

LONDON, June 21 - Scottish police said on Sunday they had charged a 36-year-old man after a series of attacks in Edinburgh on Friday, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer said appeared to have an anti-Muslim motive.

Five men sustained injuries in the attacks and three required hospital treatment for non-life-threatening injuries, police had previously said.

Videos on social media showed a half-naked, tattooed, white man who appeared to be carrying a large weapon chasing an Asian man and then attempting to break his way into a restaurant, before later being handcuffed on the ground by police.

The BBC reported that the attacks appeared to have begun near a mosque in the west of the Scottish capital before continuing at other locations in the city.

In a brief written statement on Sunday morning, Police Scotland said a 36-year-old man had been charged and a report submitted to prosecutors, and that the man and would appear in court in due course.

In a post on social media on Saturday, Starmer said the attacker "appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred".

That view was shared by the Muslim Council of Britain, which said the incident was "a direct consequence of political rhetoric that demonises entire communities".

The Scottish Association of Mosques also blamed "language that portrays migrants, refugees and Muslims as threats to be feared rather than people to be understood".

Northern Ireland suffered two days of anti-immigrant rioting earlier this month which the British government described as "racist thuggery", following a knife attack for which a Sudanese man was charged with attempted murder.

Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform UK party that tops British opinion polls, regularly criticises the government for failing to stop small boats that brought 41,000 immigrants across the Channel last year.

Rupert Lowe, who broke with Reform to set up the smaller Restore Britain party, focuses heavily on organised child sexual abuse which he says is largely carried out by Muslim men of Pakistani heritage.

Last year, the government told police to record the ethnicity of gangs involved in this type of abuse after a report detailed state failures to tackle the issue and a reluctance to recognise an "over-representation" of Asian men. REUTERS