An 18-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman have been charged in the UK with preparing far-right terrorist acts, London police said on Friday.
Rex William Henry Clark and Sofija Vinogradova are in custody and are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
They were both charged on Thursday with preparing terrorist acts. Sofija Vinogradova is also suspected of collecting “information that could be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”
The case is linked to “suspicions of far-right terrorist activity,” the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force, added.
“These are extremely serious allegations but I would urge the public not to speculate further on this matter at this time and to allow justice to take its full course,” said Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command.
“We do not believe there is a broader threat related to this investigation,” he added.
This case is “not a consequence of the unrest that occurred in the country following the events in Southport,” the police official added.
Many cities across the UK have been hit by riots following a knife attack that killed three girls during a dance class on July 29 in Southport, northwest England.
Rumours about the suspect, falsely portrayed as a Muslim asylum seeker, were spread by influential far-right accounts on social media, leading to an outbreak of xenophobic and racist violence across England, up until last week. More than 1,000 people have been arrested.
Sofija Vinogradova was first arrested on 4 August in Cheshunt, north London, on suspicion of possession of a firearm and “gathering information that could be useful to a terrorist”. She was arrested again on 10 August, along with Rex William Henry Clark.
In December 2022, MPs expressed alarm at the growing threat of far-right terrorism in the UK, reporting that a growing number of young people under the age of 24 were being targeted by the UK’s domestic intelligence service (MI5) for links to far-right terrorism.