Two 12-year-olds charged with involvement in xenophobic riots in GB

From the Editorial Staff

The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, August 13, 2024, p. 27

Two 12-year-old teenagers have become the youngest people to be prosecuted for their involvement in the xenophobic riots that followed the murder of three girls in Southport, Britain, a report said. The Independent.

One of them confessed before a Liverpool juvenile court to having thrown a projectile at the police and was released on parole until September 17, when his punishment will be imposed.

The other minor admitted before a Manchester court that he attacked a display case in a cigarette store and threw a projectile at the police. He was also filmed participating in the attack on a hotel that houses migrants, which is why he will remain in a juvenile detention center until his sentence is handed down.

Although the racist and Islamophobic violence that has gripped the country for the past week has calmed down, hundreds of people who committed attacks and who wrote online posts deemed to incite hatred continue to appear before the courts.

Andy Preston, mayor of Middlesbrough, where the violence occurred, said: 90 percent of the damage was caused by young white British men seeking thrills, with no ideological motivesreported the AFP agency.

In total, more than 900 people were arrested and 450 charged following the riots that erupted after rumours circulated on social media about the origin of the suspect in the Southport attack, who was said to be an asylum seeker, when he is a young British man of Rwandan descent.