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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent

Man charged over arson attacks on properties linked to Keir Starmer

Police outside the fire-damaged doorway of a house in London belonging to the prime minister
Police outside the fire-damaged doorway of a house in London belonging to the prime minister. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

A Ukrainian national has been charged over a series of suspected arson attacks on two homes and a vehicle linked to Keir Starmer.

Roman Lavrynovych, 21, was charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life.

Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command took over an investigation after a spate of fires in north London.

Lavrynovych was arrested in the early hours of 13 May in Sydenham, south-east London.

Bethan David, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service counter-terrorism division, said: “These charges relate to two fires at residential addresses in Islington on Sunday 11 May and in Kentish Town on Monday 12 May, as well as a car fire in Kentish Town on Thursday 8 May.”

Counter-terrorism detectives investigated three incidents. One was a fire at the prime minister’s family home in north-west London, which he now lets out to his sister-in-law, the Guardian understands. The blaze was reported to police by firefighters in the early hours of Monday.

Police said damage was caused to the property’s entrance but nobody was hurt.

A car that Starmer had sold to a neighbour last year was set alight four days earlier on the same street.

On 11 May, firefighters dealt with a small fire at the front door of a house where the PM is understood to have lived in the 1990s, before it was converted into flats.

One person was helped to safety by firefighters wearing breathing apparatus, the London fire brigade said.

Lavrynovych is due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on 16 May.

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