LONDON (Reuters) – British police charged a man with multiple counts of racially aggravated criminal damage on Thursday, after a series of anti-Muslim incidents last October and November at the office that serves Palestinian interests as well as mosques and businesses in the capital.
Police said Jonathan Katan was arrested last November after red paint was thrown or sprayed at a number of different locations on 11 occasions between Oct. 16 and Nov. 18.
Katan, 61, from Ealing in west London, was charged with 11 counts of racially aggravated criminal damage, and two other offences relating to hate crime, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. He is due to appear at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
“This (case) demonstrates how seriously we take allegations of hate crime against any of our communities,” Chief Superintendent Sean Wilson said in the statement.
There has also been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in Britain after the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas.
Earlier this week two men appeared in court facing charges of having planned to attack and kill members of the Jewish community and others with automatic weapons in the northwest of the country.
(Reporting by Muvija M; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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