[IsraelTimes] Metropolitan Police say 28-year-old man held in custody on suspicion of carrying out 5 ‘unprovoked assaults on Jewish people’ over last monthLondon Metropolitan Police on Thursday arrested a man suspected of carrying out five “unprovoked assaults on Jewish people” over the past month in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill.
The 28-year-old man was being held in custody on suspicion of “racially aggravated assaults,” the force said in a Thursday statement.
Police had been searching for the suspect since he was filmed two weeks ago assaulting a Jewish man and a child on the street in separate incidents on the same day.
In those attacks, police said the suspect struck a 64-year-old victim in the face, causing him to fall to the ground and suffer facial injuries and a broken foot, and, separately, punched a 14-year-old boy in the face, without causing lasting injuries.
Security footage of the incidents showed a tall man dressed in traditional Muslim garb.
In a separate incident on August 18, the suspect struck a 30-year-old man on the head with a bottle, police said. The victim did not sustain any injuries.
Additionally, officers have also been informed of a fourth and fifth victim who have yet to contact police, the statement said, adding that “enquiries to speak to them were ongoing.”
Local media has reported another incident suspected to have been carried out by the same man, on August 12, when a 72-year-old man was slapped and had his kippah knocked off his head.
The assaults are part of a major increase in the number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the United Kingdom this year by the Community Security Trust watch-group.
In the first half of 2021, CST recorded the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents in any six month period since it began monitoring the issue in the 1980s. The tally for January-June in 2021 was 1,308 incidents, compared to 875 in the corresponding period the previous year. The total for 2020 was 1,668 incidents.
The spike in incidents is partially connected to the exchange of fire between Hamas and Israel in May, CST said. More than 600 of the 1,308 incidents recorded in the first half of 2021 occurred in May.