Man charged in Scotland with anti-Muslim attacks in court

A national flag of Scotland against a backdrop of Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, U.K., on Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)

A 36-year-old Scottish man appeared in court Tuesday charged with five counts of attempted murder with a racist and terror motive after an attack left five people injured last Friday.

Lewis Hawkes, who was further charged with assault and robbery, breach of the peace and culpable and reckless conduct, did not enter a plea at Edinburgh Sheriff Court but was remanded in custody and is due back in court next week.

He is suspected of carrying out attacks motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment.

Outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Saturday the suspect “appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred”.

Footage of the attacks posted online showed a bare-chested man, believed to be the suspect, roaming Edinburgh’s streets with a large weapon.

Police Scotland said they received multiple emergency calls late Friday from people reporting “violent attacks including threats, robbery and vandalism across Edinburgh, with five men injured”.

The victims, two aged 22, and others aged 24, 27, and 39, sustained various injuries, police said, with three taken hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Both the Scottish Association of Mosques and the anti-Islamophobia non-profit Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) said several of the victims were Muslims.

MEND noted the alleged footage of the arrested man circulating online also showed him shouting about “protecting the country” from Muslims, accompanied by expletive-filled language.

The organization urged police to “treat this as what the evidence indicates: Islamophobic, far-right terror”.

The attacks came amid rising tension in the United Kingdom over immigration.

The Northern Irish capital, Belfast, experienced two nights of serious unrest earlier this month after a video of a violent knife attack, for which a Sudanese man was charged, went viral online.

Violent clashes also broke out between protesters and police a week earlier in Southampton, in southern England, to denounce the allegedly “racist” way local police handled, in December, the murder of a white student, Henry Nowak, by a young Sikh man.