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Southport suspect was from Christian background LBC understands, after mosque targeted by far-right protestors
31 July 2024, 19:22
LBC understands the suspect being held on suspicion of killing three children in Southport is from a Christian background.
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The development comes after far-right rioters staged a protest outside a mosque near Southport last night, which resulted in four arrests, over fifty police officers sustaining injuries and police vans being set on fire.
It is believed the attack on the mosque was fuelled by online disinformation which suggested that the alleged perpetrator was a Muslim.
However, LBC understands that this is not the case and that the seventeen-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is from a Christian family.
Detectives have been granted additional time to question the alleged attacker, who was born in Cardiff and later moved to Banks in Lancashire.
Speculation has been rife about the background of the individual, with disinformation on social media initially suggesting that he was an asylum seeker, yet this was debunked by Merseyside Police, who confirmed he was born in Cardiff.
Last night’s disturbances, believed to have been carried out by members of the far-right English Defence League (EDL), have received widespread condemnation, including from Jenni Stancombe, the mother of seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, who was fatally stabbed in Monday’s attack.
As the violent scenes were unfolding, Ms Stancombe posted on social media: “This is the only thing that I will write, but please please stop the violence in Southport tonight.
“The police have been nothing but heroic these last 24 hours and they and we don’t need this.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told LBC that the government is assessing whether the EDL should be a proscribed organization.
Speaking to Shelagh Fogarty, Ms Rayner said: "We have laws and we have proscribed groups and we do look at that and it is reviewed regularly.
“So I’m sure that that will be something that the Home Secretary [Yvette Cooper] will be looking at as part of the normal course of what we do and the intelligence that we have.
Watch Again: Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner joins Shelagh Fogarty | 31/07/24
“But I think the bigger issue is about taking on the minority of people that have got thuggish behaviour… not our British values.”
The Deputy Prime Minister also urged people not to “jump to conclusions” about the motive of the attack and the individual involved, whilst the Home Secretary told parliament yesterday that social media companies “need[ed] to take some responsibility” for the dissemination of false information.
Indeed, police have warned about the spread of misinformation online, with officers confirming that a name circulated online was not that of the person they are questioning.
The Muslim Council of Britain, the UK’s largest Muslim community group, issued a statement saying the spreading of this name led to some people “wrongfully associat[ing] the crime with Muslims”, and urged people to “stand firm against the cynical forces of hatred and division”.
It’s believed that the incorrect name was originally published by a website named Channel 3 Now.
In a statement, the website’s editor wrote: “On 29th July, 2024, we published an article titled '17-year-old boy arrested in connection with the stabbings in Southport, England'. Unfortunately, the information provided in that article was not accurate and did not meet our standards of reliability and integrity."
