Are teenagers being recruited for antisemitic attacks in Europe? — BBC News

[0:00] A determined, intimidatory series of attacks on British Jews, says the head of the Met police. [0:06] Petrol bombs thrown at synagogues, Jewish charity ambulances worth a million pounds [0:12] set alight, the names of rabbis put online in threatening posts. [0:17] I'm Lucy Manning, the BBC's special correspondent, and I've been investigating these attacks. [0:22] All claimed by Harakat Ashab Al-Yamin Al-Islamiyah, which translates as [0:27] the Islamic movement of the people of the right hand. [0:30] It's a group no one had really heard of until recently. [0:34] So is Iran, as counter-terrorism police are investigating, behind it. [0:39] Looks for all the world like ultimately these attacks are emanating from somewhere within [0:47] Iran or entities close to the Iranian state. [0:50] Dave Rich works for the Community Security Trust, an organisation that helps protect British Jews. [0:56] The logo and the language they use is resonant of Iranian Shia Islamism. [1:04] But more importantly, these claims are appearing on telegram channels that are very closely associated [1:12] with IRGC or other Iranian or pro-Iranian entities. [1:16] And sometimes these claims are appearing literally within minutes of the arson attacks happening. [1:22] So there seems to be a very short chain of communication between the people doing things [1:27] on the ground here and the people announcing them from somewhere in the Middle East. [1:32] Around 300,000 Jews live in Britain, with London, Hertfordshire, Manchester and Leeds having the biggest populations. [1:41] For years, schools, synagogues and community centres have been protected behind gates and walls [1:47] with security patrols, an unwelcome fact of life for British Jews. [1:53] Then came the Heaton Park synagogue attack in Manchester, where two worshippers were killed last [1:58] year on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. [2:02] Now, Jewish buildings are being firebombed. [2:04] In March, CCTV captured hooded men torching four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity [2:11] in a synagogue car park in Golders Green, one of the main Jewish areas in North London. [2:16] No one was hurt, but the targeting of a Jewish medical organisation outside a synagogue [2:22] spread fear across the community. [2:25] The video verified by the BBC shows statements in Arabic, English and Hebrew. [2:30] It also shows a map of the area, and then the synagogue car park where the fire took place, [2:38] and then footage from the fire itself. [2:42] The video makes claims about the synagogue and an affiliated rabbi's [2:47] links to Zionism, the support for a Jewish state of Israel. [2:52] Less than a month later, more attacks followed in neighbouring areas. [2:55] Also in the middle of the night, men in balaclavas threw a brick and two [2:59] bottles at the Finchley reformed synagogue. [3:02] Later that day, a petrol bomb was hurled into the car park of a Persian language [3:07] dissident media organisation in Wembley. [3:10] Two days after that, two jars containing a non-hazardous powdered substance were found [3:15] in Kensington Gardens in West London, near the Israeli embassy, after the group [3:20] claimed they'd used radioactive materials. [3:23] Over the same weekend, the former offices of a Jewish charity in Hendon and the Kenton [3:29] United Synagogue in Harrow were also targeted in what the police said were attempted arsons. [3:35] These attacks seem to be carried out mostly by quite young, kind of low-level criminal people [3:42] who don't have any particular ideological affiliation with Iran or with Islamist extremist groups. [3:49] There's a common playbook that Iran and other hostile states have used in many different [3:53] circumstances around the world. [3:56] The group's videos on Telegram, which often claim responsibility for attacks or warn of future ones, [4:02] have been short and generally low in quality. [4:05] There's still a lot we don't know about how they operate. [4:08] And two of these channels seem to belong to Iraqi militias that are pro-Iran and some seem or appear [4:18] to be sort of news channels that feature heavily pro-Iranian coverage. [4:25] So far, counter-terror police have made more than 20 arrests. [4:30] Most of those charged have been teenagers. [4:32] One, a 17-year-old pleaded guilty to throwing a petrol bomb at Kenton United Synagogue. [4:38] He claimed he didn't know what the building was and didn't hate Jews. [4:43] It has emerged in other countries that Iran has effectively used social media, [4:47] different platforms to recruit people in different countries to do all sorts of things for them, [4:53] whether that's carrying out attacks or collecting intelligence that might be useful for future attacks. [4:59] Perpetrators are quite young, I think as young as 14 up to 19 and which again resembles [5:08] the previous recruitment of Iran. [5:11] And the other thing we know that, especially in the case of France, [5:15] the perpetrators were recruited online apparently via Snapchat for money. [5:21] The Islamist group has claimed a series of attacks across Europe. [5:25] A synagogue in the Belgian city of Liège was damaged in an explosion. [5:29] Just over a week after the Iran war broke out. [5:32] Three separate attacks in the Netherlands took place in the days that followed, [5:36] including a fire at a synagogue in Rotterdam and an explosion at a Jewish school in Amsterdam. [5:43] In the subsequent weeks, there were more attempts on Jewish community and commercial targets linked [5:48] to Israel. In Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany and North Macedonia, [5:53] fortunately none resulted in major damage. [5:56] I think it's quite a challenge for the authorities. Effectively Iran, [6:00] they can use a particular criminal network in one country to carry out attacks. [6:05] If that network is broken up and prosecuted by the authorities, [6:09] they can just try and pay someone else. [6:11] Iran does have proxy groups, military organisations that support Iran and are funded by Iran but carry out [6:17] their own attacks like the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah, a political and military group in Lebanon [6:24] which is prescribed as a terror organisation by the UK government. [6:28] But this is different mirroring a technique Russia used two years ago when a private military [6:33] group that acts on its behalf paid British people to carry out arson attacks in the UK. [6:40] The Swedish security service has accused Iran of recruiting gang members, particularly young teenagers, [6:47] to attack Iranian dissidents and Israeli-linked companies. [6:51] The police have now put more officers, including armed ones, onto the streets to protect Jewish [6:56] communities but could more be done to stop the threat? [6:59] The IRGC, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is a powerful arm of the Iranian state. [7:06] There have been calls for the UK government to add it to its list of prescribed terror organisations. [7:12] That would make it a criminal offence to belong to or support it. [7:16] When are you, after two years of promising, going to prescribe the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, [7:23] and are you going to prescribe this group that's claimed the attack at this synagogue and other places? [7:28] We have to deal with malign state actors. That will require legislation and we're going to bring [7:33] that legislation forward. It's really important that we do that. I'm increasingly concerned that [7:39] a number of countries are using proxies for attacks in this country. [7:45] The police have arrested nine people on suspicion of conspiring to carry out a similar attack. [7:51] So maybe they've made a breakthrough in discovering how the attacks are being organised. [7:57] But if a foreign state is paying for crimes here, it's a challenge to the government, to policing, [8:03] and in this case, British Jews and anti-regime Iranians.