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Ikaba Koyi Sharecast News
20 Oct, 2017 17:50 20 Oct, 2017 18:01

President Trump wrongly links rise of UK crime to 'radical Islamic terror'

US President Donald Trump was accused of fuelling hate crimes after he said the UK crime rate was linked to "radical Islamic terror".

Trump tweeted: "Just out report: 'United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.' Not good, we must keep America safe!"

The President's remark was seemingly in reference to a report from the UK statistical office, which on Thursday revealed a 13% increase in police recorded crime from the previous year.

Factors influencing the rise, the Office for National Statistics said, included continuing improvements to crime recording and genuine increases in some crime categories, with no link made to terror or Islam.

The London and Manchester terror attacks in 2017 contribute to a 59% rise in the number of attempted murder offences in the year, the ONS report showed, though the number of deaths from terror attacks in the UK in 2017 is lower than in 2005 from the London bombings and far short of the years of IRA-related terrorism between 1971 and 1992, not to mention the 58 killed in a single terror attack in Las Vegas this summer.

Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP and Labour chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, responded to Trump's tweet with her own, saying: "Hate crime in UK up 29% - sadly encouraged by ignorant tweets like this. Not good POTUS".

Trump's tweet also attracted responses from other British MP's such as Labour's deputy leader, Tom Watson, who tweeted: "Officer, I'd like to report a hate crime", while former Labour minister Hilary Benn told the BBC: "I am sure we would all appreciate it if we could see a reduction in the number of tweets like this from the president of the United States."

The Green Party's MP, Caroline Lucas, also reportedly asked Theresa May to "publicly condemn" Donald Trump for "outright fear-mongering".

It was later shown that Trump's tweet was an almost identical headline to one had screened in the US just seconds earlier.

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