Donald Trump links UK crime rise to ‘radical Islamic terror’, despite complete absence of evidence to support claim
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has blamed a rise in crime in the UK on “radical Islamic terror”, despite there being no evidence to support the claim.
In an early morning tweet the President said: “Just out report: ‘United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.’ Not good, we must keep America safe!”
The figures come from the UK’s Office for National Statistics, which released new data on Wednesday showing the number of crimes recorded annually in England and Wales had passed five million for the first time in a decade.
The report revealed a 13 per cent rise in recorded crimes, with a surge in knife crime, which had risen 26 per cent year-on-year, and a 19 per cent increase in sexual offences.
The report said, “of the 664 homicides recorded in the year ending June 2017, there were 35 relating to the London and Manchester terror attacks.”
The figure means five per cent of all murders were due to terrorist attacks.
The report also said the year-on-year number of murders rose by 46, excluding the Manchester and London terror attacks, and also attributed the rise in violent offences to the creation of new crime recording categories including “violence without injury”, and “stalking and harassment”.
Commenting on the figures, crime minister Sarah Newton said “much” of the violent crime recorded was down to greater accuracy.
But the ONS’ John Flatley said: “While improvements made by police forces in recording crime are still a factor in the increase, we judge that there have been genuine increases in crime - particularly in some of the low incidence but more harmful categories.”
Neither suggested that Islamic terror had played any role in putting the recorded figures up.
The report noted that recent trends in murder rates have been affected by incidents in which there were multiple victims, including the deaths of 96 football fans at Hillsborough in 1989, and the terror attacks in London this year.
However, it said that if both cases were excluded, there remains an eight per cent rise in the murder rate, and this follows a “general upward trend seen in recent years”.
Mr Trump has previously cited UK terror attacks as a reason to introduce tougher immigration controls.
In September, Mr Trump used the terror attack on a Tube train at Parsons Green to call for a “far larger, tougher” travel ban in the US.
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