Hamed Chapman

Only 10 percent of last year’s arrests for terrorist offences in the UK were convicted for any terrorism-related offences, while the number of those detained doubled with far-right sympathies or Nazi tendencies, according to the latest official figures by the Home Office.

Other police powers in the year ending December 2016 also show a 30 percent fall in the number of examinations carried out under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, while there was also a 7 percent decrease in the number of stops and searches carried out by the Metropolitan Police Service under Section 43 and a 13 per cent decrease in resultant arrests.

Of the 260 terrorist arrests throughout the UK, most of them in a blaze of publicity, only 96 ended up being charged, and of which even fewer 79 were terrorism-related. Of the 31 prosecuted, 26 were convicted, one for non-terrorism offences and two were acquitted.

Whilst just under three-quarters (74%) of those arrested in the year ending December 2016 considered themselves to be of British or British dual nationality (compared to an average of 58% since September 2001). The proportion of those arrested for a terrorism-related offence as suspected Right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis more than doubled from 15 in 2015 to 35. It comes after a warning from the Government’s terrorism watchdog that far-Right extremists now account for one-in-four of those reported to counter-radicalisation schemes.

Some 91 were listed as ethnic white (up from 71 in 2015) and 27 Black (down from 39), 17 were grouped as others. Propositions slightly changed when it came top being actually charged with terrorism offences with Asian up to more than 50 percent (44 out of 79), Whites 21 and Blacks 12.

Regarding the self-defined nationalities of subjects arrested for terrorism offences, 192 of the 261 were described as British (including one dual nationality), 13 Turkish, 13 from elsewhere in Europe, 16 from African countries including eight Algerians, seven from Asia (four Pakistanis, two Afghanis and one Sri Lankan) and one from New Zealand.