By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON (AA) – A man believed to be the son of an owner of the company that rented the van used in the Finsbury Park terror attack was arrested Tuesday for alleged offensive social media posts regarding the attacks.
“It’s a shame they don’t hire out steam rollers or tanks could have done a tidy job then,” Richard Evans is alleged to have wrote.
“A 37-year-old man was being held on suspicion of displaying threatening, abusive, insulting written material with intent that is likely to stir up racial hatred,” South Wales Police said in a statement.
Following the attack, the rental company issued a statement that said: "We at Pontyclun Van Hire are shocked and saddened by the incident that took place at Finsbury Park last night.”
Darren Osborne, 47, mowed down Muslim worshippers after prayers Monday, killing one and injuring 11 others in an Islamophobic terror attack. He rented the van just prior to the attack.
Orborne reportedly shouted “I want to kill all Muslims” during the attack.
Orborne’s neighbors in Pentwyn, Wales, said the weekend before the terror attack, he called a 12-year-old Muslim child an “inbred”.
Anti-Muslim hate crimes surged in Manchester and London following recent deadly suicide bombing at Manchester Arena and attacks at London Bridge.
The number of attacks skyrocketed to 139 -- a five-fold increase -- in Manchester in the week after bombing, according to TellMama, a group recording Islamophobic crimes, compared to 25 the in the week before.
“There has been a significant spike in incidents of hate crime and Islamophobic incidents in the aftermath of the London Bridge attack,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said earlier this month, following the London Bridge attack.
Khan’s office backed up the mayor’s statement as provisional figures released suggested the number of racist incidents recorded after the Finsbury attack was 54, higher than the daily average of 38 to that point in 2017.