(JTA) — Crosses drawn with a red liquid appeared on several homes with mezuzahs in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of northern London.
“Officers have spoken to the residents of these properties,” the police wrote in a statement Tuesday about the incidents in Stamford Hill. “We understand it’s likely that a local man who is well known to residents and suffers with mental ill health may be responsible.”
Shomrim, a Jewish security group, called the incidents an anti-Semitic “hate crime,” adding on Twitter that the perpetrator “appears to have used blood.”
Last month, the Crown Court in the northern English city of Leeds convicted a far-right extremist of terrorism charges, ruling that he was planning attacks on Jews and homosexuals. The man, 23, admitted to seven charges of promoting terrorism and circulating material from terrorist publications and was sentenced to more than four years in prison.
In 2019, the number of anti-Semitic incidents documented in Britain increased for the fourth consecutive year, reaching a record tally of 1,805 cases.
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