Lockdown young ‘ can be drawn to terror’
FEARS are growing that lonely youngsters could be drawn to terrorism during the pandemic amid a surge in extreme Right- wing material online.
So far this year 3,000 pieces of suspected material have been flagged up to the Counter- Terrorism Internet Referral Unit ( CTIRU) compared with 2,796 in 2019, a rise of around seven per cent.
The number of referrals for extreme Right- wing content online went from 134 in 2019, to 192 between January 1 and November 20 this year,
a rise of 43 per cent. More children are being arrested for terrorism offences while the number of adults has dropped.
A total of 11 under 18s were held in the year ending September 2019, rising to 17 in the year to September 2020.
Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Southworth from the CTIRU said: “There has been a slight shift during the pandemic, which may simply reflect people being at home more, and ultimately perhaps spending more time online.
“Perhaps in some instances sadly people who have less people to speak to perhaps recoursing to online media for greater quantities of their time because they’ve been stuck in self- isolating or lacking people to come into contact with.
“It could be a sad corollary really of the Covid pandemic that we’ve not yet really fully realised.”
The Act Early website has been set up to report signs of young people at risk. Mr Southworth said that they want to stop someone becoming “radicalised or subject to hateful extremism in our midst”, leading to avoidable injury.