UK Police Arrest 11 People As Part Of Probe Into Hate Comments About English Footballers

LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th August, 2021) Eleven people were arrested as part of the UK Football Policing Unit's (UKFPU) countrywide hate crime inquiry into the racist messages addressed to England's football players, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) said on Thursday.

On July 11, the English team lost to Italy in the EURO 2020 final at the Wembley Stadium in London. After the game, England's players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka � who failed to score in a penalty shootout �� were subjected to a hate campaign on social media.

The UKFPU made requests to social media to get more precise data for the investigation.

"Where there have been responses, this information has been passed on to local forces, who have so far arrested 11 people across the UK on suspicion of a number of offences, including malicious communications and breaching section 127 of the Communications Act 2003," NPCC said in the statement.

A total of 207 social media accounts have sent the racist messages, and 123 of them are outside the UK. The UKFPU is now expecting the additional data to identify the rest of 50 account holders as long as 34 accounts belong to the UK citizens.

Football Policing Lead Mark Roberts said that investigating social media crimes is difficult, but the offenders will not escape justice thanks to assistance from the social media companies and proactive search techniques.

Twitter said to have deleted over a thousand racist comments directed at the football players, and Facebook assured the public on Monday it was making every effort to delete the abusive content as soon as possible and called on the users to contribute to the process.