Police detain 5 over ‘racist’ tower model on bonfire

THE police said they arrested five men following an outcry over the burning of a model of London’s Grenfell Tower, where 72 people died in a devastating fire last year.

London’s metropolitan police yesterday said the five men, aged 19 to 55, were arrested “on suspicion of a public order offence” as part of an investigation of a video showing the model burning.

The men handed themselves in to a police station in south London on Monday night, the force said, and they remained in custody yesterday.

Prime Minister Theresa May and other politicians criticised the burning, while the Justice4Grenfell group said it was “shocked and disgusted at the inhumanity and callousness of those involved in this video”.

The video shows the cardboard model burning on a bonfire, apparently in a private garden, as several adults watch. The model included depictions of people, mostly cut out of brown paper, holding their arms in the air at upper windows.

“Where’s the ninja?” One man is heard asking, using a racist term to refer to a cut-out of a Muslim woman wearing a niqab.

“The little ninja’s getting it at the minute,” said a later comment as the model burnt.

“Stay in your flat, we’ll come in and get you,” another man said, apparently mocking firefighters. One dissenter is heard suggesting that the group’s action was in “really bad taste”.

Moyra Samuels of Justice4Grenfell told the BBC the video appeared to reflect “a worrying rise of racism in this country at the moment”. |