LONDON: A 15-year-old boy on Thursday became the first person to be charged with rioting following a wave of violent unrest that swept across the UK
The teen, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, appeared at South Tyneside Youth Court on Thursday but his case was adjourned for two weeks. He was charged following disorder in Sunderland in northern England on Aug. 2, and had pleaded guilty to separate charges of violent disorder and burglary.
“This defendant is one of a number of individuals who we expect will be charged with riot,” said Gale Gilchrist, chief crown prosecutor for northeast England.
Hundreds of people have been arrested and charged since riots erupted on July 30 after misinformation spread online that the suspect in a knife attack that killed three children was a Muslim asylum-seeker.
Protesters fueled by far-right activists attacked a mosque in the town of Southport, where the girls were killed, and the violence soon spread to more than a dozen cities and towns across the country. Some of the worst unrest centered around hotels housing asylum-seekers, with protesters hurling bricks and storming some hotels and clashing with riot police.
Many have since been charged with violent disorder and sentenced, but no one else had so far been charged with rioting, a more serious offense that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Also on Thursday, a man was jailed for three years and two months in the city of Manchester for punching and kicking a Black man in the face during disorder in the city. Another man who threw bricks at police outside a hotel housing asylum-seekers was sentenced to two years and 10 months.
Last week, a 26-year-old man who used social media to encourage people to torch hotels that house asylum-seekers was sentenced to more than three years in prison.
15-year-old boy becomes first to be charged with rioting following recent UK unrest
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15-year-old boy becomes first to be charged with rioting following recent UK unrest
- The teen appeared at South Tyneside Youth Court on Thursday but his case was adjourned for two weeks
- “This defendant is one of a number of individuals who we expect will be charged with riot,” said Gale Gilchrist, chief crown prosecutor for northeast England
Police suspect suicide bomber behind Nigeria’s deadly mosque blast
- Nigeria police said Thursday that they suspected a suicide bomber was behind the blast that killed several worshippers in a mosque on Christmas eve in the country’s northeastern Borno state
MAIDUGURI: Nigeria police said Thursday that they suspected a suicide bomber was behind the blast that killed several worshippers in a mosque on Christmas eve in the country’s northeastern Borno state.
A police spokesman put the death toll at five, with 35 wounded. A witness on Wednesday told AFP that eight people were killed.
The bomb went off inside the crowded Al-Adum Juma’at Mosque at Gamboru market in the capital city of Maiduguri, as Muslim faithful gathered for evening prayers around 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT), according to witnesses and the police.
“An unknown individual, whom we suspect to be a member of a terrorist group, entered inside the mosque, and while prayer was ongoing, we recorded an explosion,” police spokesman Nahum Daso told journalists.
Daso said in a statement late on Wednesday that the “incident may have been a suicide bombing, based on the recovery of fragments of a suspected suicide vest and witness statements.”
Police officials have been deployed to markets, worship centers and other public places in the wake of the blast.
Nigeria has been battling a jihadist insurgency since 2009 by jihadist groups Boko Haram and an offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), in a conflict that has killed at least 40,000 and displaced around two million from their homes in the northeast, according to the UN.
Although the conflict has been largely limited to the northeastern region, jihadist attacks have been recorded in other parts of the west African nation.
Maiduguri itself — once the scene of nightly gunbattles and bombings — has been calm in recent years, with the last major attack recorded in 2021.
