Police arrested two people Tuesday on charges for inciting ‘racial hatred’ after a video appeared on Facebook and Youtube showing a man burning a copy of the Koran.
The video, which has not been published by MailOnline, shows a man saying, “I’ve been trying to get my poxy fire started for half-hour wondering what s**t I can get it going with [until] I found this,” and then tearing pages from the Koran and lighting them on fire.
West Mercia Police arrested a Worcestershire man and a woman from Evesham in connection with the video, according to the Daily Mail.
The arrests come after police failed to prevent multiple terror attacks in the U.K. this year, despite British intelligence identifying 23,000 potential jihadis living in Britain, according to a report published May 27 in the Times of London.
Of this ‘pool’ of potential terrorists, 3,000 are suspected of posing an “imminent threat” while the other 20,000 have been investigated in the past and categorized as posing a “residual risk.” Both Manchester attacker Salman Abedi and Westminster killer Khalid Masood were “subjects of interest” but were not under surveillance.
“We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War II, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by the thousands,” said Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence at the University of Buckingham.
Instead, British security forces are arresting ‘racially inflammatory’ suspects who didn’t have enough wood for a fire.
“This was a concerning incident and we will be carrying out a thorough investigation. It is being investigated as a hate crime,” said Superintendent Kevin Purcell after the arrests.
“We have been in contact with our local Muslim community via Councillor Jabba Riaz [and] if anyone has any concerns about social media posts that potentially incite hate, I would urge them not to share the posts but to report the incident to the police and social media company at the earliest opportunity,” Worcester’s deputy Mayor said.
Twitter said it does not comment on individual accounts for ‘privacy and security reasons’ and Facebook said it is investigating the posts.
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