Nadine Osman
Muslims in Bradford, West Yorkshire, have been sent malicious letters threatening to launch acid attacks and “kill scum Muslims”.
Police have launched a hate crime investigation into the letter delivered last month by second-class post with a Lancashire postmark.
Letters included an image of a sword and the England flag with the slogan “kill scum Muslims”, followed by a threat on niqab wearing women reading: “We are now going to do acid attacks on anyone who wears the funny black masks around your square & Bradford & other places.” Other letters threatened to kill men grooming white girls.
One of the recipients of the anonymous letter sent to Hanover Square is Mohammed Qayd, 27, who said it arrived “completely out of the blue”.
He told the Guardian: “I was shocked. My mum wears a burqa and she goes to town regularly so I was concerned for her. When I explained it to her she realised the severity of it and was afraid. You start wondering whether it’s safe to go out on their own.”
West Yorkshire Police told The Muslim News an investigation had opened into the letters.
A spokesman for the police said, “The incident is being treated as a hate crime and being taken extremely seriously, a thorough investigation has been launched and officers are working with the local community and partners to identify and prosecute those responsible for this despicable crime.”
Counter-terror police are hunting a suspected far-right extremist behind a separate campaign of hate mail and suspicious packages sent to mosques and political targets in the UK and US.
Three mosques in London were the latest to receive malicious letters bearing a Sheffield postmark as part of a “structured” transatlantic campaign.
One letter threatened to bomb Forest Gate mosque “very soon…when there are plenty of Muslims present for maximum effect”, while the sender told another mosque in east London they were coming to “make you vermin pay” and a third letter received in Hackney called for the capital to be “cleansed”.
