Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 16 hours ago
Met Police Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes said social media platforms should do more to prevent antisemitic posts being shared online during a visit to Finchley Reform Synagogue following Wednesday’s arson attack.

Category

🗞
News
Transcript
00:00Well, one of the things we know is there's a concerted campaign across Europe, very likely a connected campaign across
00:08Europe and a challenge we face in terms of addressing those.
00:12And I'm not going to speak to the specifics of these cases, but we do know we've seen people who
00:17are basically thugs for hire.
00:18It's a challenging policing task for us to identify individuals who might take a small sum of money and then
00:26carry out acts on behalf of others.
00:27But we can say we have identified those people in other cases and some of them facing really long prison
00:33sentences as a result.
00:35Investigators are working to establish whether Iran has paid people to carry out acts on UK soil after a series
00:43of incidents, including an arson attack on four Jewish hatzola, ambulances and attempted arson attacks at synagogues in North London.
00:51Another incident saw a drone flown near the Israeli embassy in London and a petrol bomb was thrown towards the
00:59site of Volant Media, the parent company of Persian news channel Iran International.
01:05A group that calls itself Harakat, Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyah, the Islamic movement of the Companions of the Right,
01:14that is suspected to be Iran-backed, has claimed responsibility for most of these incidents, along with other attacks in
01:22Europe since the 9th of March.
01:24But we do know that it is, in some cases, young people who have been drawn into online conversations, imagining
01:32there's quick or easy money to make.
01:34And then in the case of someone, I'm going to give you an example, Dylan Earle, who is serving a
01:3817-year prison sentence for acting on behalf of the Wagner Group, carrying out an arson in East London.
01:44In that case, Russian-linked, but 17 years in prison, real consequences for a young man.
01:49Well, we'll continue to work hard on the online space. I mean, it's a job for the wider security and
01:56intelligence services.
01:57It's a task for counter-terrorism policing. But it's also something we think that the platforms could contribute more to,
02:04because there is an online sharing and promulgation of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
02:09And actually, you can see those even this week. So after incidents that have affected synagogues like this one here,
02:17people have to look then at a set of posts, anti-Semitic posts, posts about conspiracy theories, claims that it's
02:25a false flag operation by Mossad.
02:28That kind of content is helping create an environment of, some have described as ambient anti-Semitism, but it's actually
02:36very visible anti-Semitism.
02:38And I believe, and we would ask that platforms play their part in addressing that.
02:42The threat level in relation to the UK will be set by colleagues in the security services and in the
02:49intelligence services.
02:50They'll inform that we respond both to that threat level, but also to the experiences of communities.
02:57Peace.
Comments

Recommended