British authorities were gearing up for as many as 30 riots across the country Wednesday night amid fears the offices of law firms that represent immigrants and asylum seekers could be potential targets. File photo by Adam Vaughan/EPA-EFE
Aug. 7 (UPI) — British authorities were gearing up for a wave of riots across England with reports of at least 30 planned for Wednesday night amid fears the offices of law firms that represent immigrants and asylum seekers could be potential targets.
A “standing army” of 6,000 police was mobilized after far-right groups circulated a list of 39 immigration lawyers, charities and groups that provide services to migrants and refugees on social media and 500 prison spaces had been freed up as public prosecutors threatened swingeing justice for those participating in or organizing violent disorder.
“All of us are concerned that a list is being circulated online,” Communities Minister Jim McMahon told BBC Radio.
“We at this point don’t know if those will transpire to be protests in the way that we’ve seen in other places. Or whether it’s a list that’s intended just to cause alarm and distress, or even to provoke.
“But to be clear we are absolutely prepared in terms of our policing response, our prosecutor response and also our court response,” said McMahon.
The country’s top prosecutor said at least one rioter had been charged with terror offenses and warned his office would consider the same where organized groups were planning “really serious disruption to advance an ideology.”
Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said his officials would deploy every legal means available to put people behind the disorder behind bars and that anti-terrorism laws were being used in one ongoing prosecution.
Police also said they were confident they would be able to maintain control.
The Law Society said it had “serious concerns for the safety and wellbeing” of its members with at least one immigration advice center boarding up its windows and doors in anticipation of trouble.
“A direct assault on our legal profession is a direct assault on our democratic values and we are supporting our members who are being targeted,” the society’s president, Nick Emmerson, said in a post on X.
He added that he had written to Prime Minister Keir Starmer asking that the threats against the profession be treated with the “utmost seriousness.”
The non-profit advocacy group Hope Not Hate warned the list was an aspirational “hit list” that called for action, “up to and including terrorism” against the targets named at 8 p.m. local time, circulated by an anonymous individual who it said was also involved in instigating anti-Muslim violence in Southport and Liverpool over the past week.
“This actor, who has also called for the assassinations of public figures, must be brought to justice and face the full force of the law,” HNH said in a news release.
The group said the purpose of the list was to spread fear and uncertainty as it was impossible to predict whether and where attacks might materialize and therefore “any and all services should be on high alert.”
HNH said it was also monitoring a number of other far-right demonstrations planned for the days ahead which it said were emerging “more organically” and so may attract larger numbers of protesters.
The developments came after a night of relative calm with police in Liverpool and Durham tamping down tensions with the use of dispersal orders that give them powers to order people to leave the area.
The coroner was due to open inquests Wednesday morning in the Liverpool suburb of Sefton into the killings of Bebe King, 6, Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, in nearby Southport on July 29.
The last of the eight other children and two adults injured in the stabbing spree at a dance studio — triggering a week of unrest across England and Wales — were discharged from hospital.
Axel Muganwa Rudakubana,17, of Banks in Lancashire, was charged July 31 with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and possession of a bladed weapon.
On Wednesday, the first rioters were also sent to prison with a judge at Liverpool Crown Court sentencing one man to three years for taking part in violent disorder in Southport last week when a mob hijacked a vigil for the slain girls, injuring dozens of police and attacking police vehicles and a mosque.
The man received a concurrent two-month sentence for assaulting a police officer.
Another man was sentenced to 28 months in prison for violent disorder and torching a police vehicle in Liverpool plus two months for perpetrating “malicious communication.”
A third man was sent to prison for 18 months plus two months for a “racially aggravated element” of the offense.
The first significant prison sentences follow the jailing of an 18-year-old man sent to prison Tuesday for two months after pleading guilty to criminal damage charges following a riot near Manchester on Sunday.
About 100 among the more than 400 people arrested across the country since rioting erupted a day after the July 29 killings in Southport pleaded not guilty to various charges but, unusually, were refused bail pending trial.
Juveniles, however, continue to be bailed in line with standard policy.
