LONDON: A man arrested for threatening to shoot Nigel Farage in the head has a profile picture of a British Asian man on his social media and has tweeted “Hindu phrases”, a UK newspaper said.
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The Metropolitan police confirmed to TOI that a man in his 20s was arrested on Tuesday at a residential address in south London on suspicion of sending threatening communications to an MP.
The threat directed at the Reform UK leader said “I am going to shoot you in the head if you win” and was posted on X in May.
The Daily Telegraph said that the suspect described himself as a terrorist on social media and his profile picture on X is of a British Asian man. “He … describes himself as a Liberal Democrat,” the Telegraph wrote. TOI has not seen the account.
The tweet was identified by parliament’s security information and risk analysis service and was reported to the Metropolitan police’s parliamentary liaison and investigations team as a threat directed towards a serving MP. It was then reported to police on May 8.
A Met spokesperson said: “After receiving the report, detectives submitted an application to a social media platform to gain access to the user’s contact information. After the relevant information was returned to detectives the man was arrested, with support from local Met officers.”
After being held in police custody overnight, the man has been released on police bail pending further enquiries.
Farage told The Telegraph: “This is the first time the police have ever proactively acted on a social media post, and I hope they are looking at the other 300 or 400 similar posts from this year alone. This has been going on for years — not just words but videos of people firing guns and so on — and in the past we have always been told by the police that these social media posts don’t meet the threshold, which is extraordinary.”
Incoming PM Andy Burnham said a “serious review” is needed of MPs’ security following the murder of Reform UK politician Ann Widdecombe last week as “politics has darkened in the last decade”.
