The UK terror attacks you don't hear about - and how they go under the radar

Terror attacks against Muslims in the UK are going unnoticed by members of the public because it is taking authorities as long as nine months to identify them as terrorism, The i Paper can reveal.

A quarter of the terror attacks in Britain over the past decade have targeted Muslims, but delays in confirming the offenders’ motivations mean the public may not be aware of the scale of the threat, the UK’s former head of Counter Terrorism Policing has said.

The attacks include the attempted beheading of an Iranian man last August, a 2024 stabbing at an asylum hotel, the firebombing of a reception facility for small boats in 2022 and a violent rampage by a man shouting that “all Muslims should die” in 2019.

Caroline’s mother Christine has called for an apology from the press and police over how she was treated before she died.

She made a documentary called Search for the Truth for Disney+ last year

Caroline Flack’s death has become a tragic parable about cancel culture, responsible use of social media, the intrusion of the tabloid press, the sensation of reality TV and the misunderstandings and stigmas about mental ill health, from which we were all supposed to learn and in which each of us who watched on as voyeurs was complicit. 

People who have a strong chest and back may be less likely to have a heart attack, according to a new study.

Researchers said that people with strong pecs, back muscles and torso are also less likely to die within the next decade.

Experts from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said that it is “not just about being muscly”, as the size of people’s muscles was not linked to their risk of a heart attack or early death.

It said that all kinds of exercise, and not just strength training, can improve muscle density.

It is fascinating that people’s skeletal muscle could be linked to their risk of having a heart attack. I am now personally interested in exercises like cycling, planks and pilates, which I enjoy and may have an effect on these muscles.

What are the things that you do to keep yourself healthy? Your mind might jump straight to the run you do a couple of times a week, or the choices you make about what to eat, the amount of sleep you manage to get each night or the friends who make you feel seen and heard. And you’d be right. These are all things that keep us healthy.

Millions of Britons could pay higher energy bills than they need to if they do not submit a meter reading before the price cap rises on Wednesday.

The price cap, set by the regulator Ofcom, is set to rise, affecting 5.3 million households on a standard tariff.

How much the price cap will increase from Wednesday, 1 July.

The average gas and electricity bill will jump to £1,862 a year.

There are currently 27 fixed deals available that are cheaper than July’s price cap, with average savings of £285, so act now to save yourself money.  The price cap is going up, but your bills don’t have to.

People are future-proofing their homes for sustainability and to protect themselves against unpredictable energy costs

The summer’s first full Moon is lighting up skies across the country this week.

To see the Stawberry Moon, look towards the south-east after sunset. That will be after around 9.20pm on Tuesday, 30 June. The moon will track southwards through the night, setting in the south-west before sunrise on Wednesday.

Angry people on social media claim the current high temperatures are nothing special but they ignore the long-term trends

The Government has said it will appoint a national maternity commissioner to drive change after a report concluded families have suffered from repeated failures in NHS care.

For too long women, babies and families have been failed by a system that didn’t listen. Their stories are heart-breaking and demand action.

Some forecasts suggest temperatures could begin to climb again as we enter July. Here is everything you need to know about another upcoming heatwave.

Although a return to heatwave conditions is looking increasingly likely for some areas,  the likelihood of such extreme high temperatures or high levels of humidity as last week is currently low.

The UK just experienced it’s hottest June day on record with temperatures topping 36°C in some parts of the country. And while Britain has experienced hotter weather before, like the heatwave in July 2022, something about this one has felt particularly grim-humidity. But why does this make a difference? You can read Clare Wilson’s full article on The i Paper’s website. #heatwave #ukheatwave

Neil Basu, who led UK Counter Terrorism Policing between 2018 and 2022, said difficulties in identifying the motives of lone attackers mean they may not be identified as terrorists until police have conducted investigations or court proceedings have concluded, at which point public awareness has died down.

“The less you talk about it, the less it’s covered, the more complacent and less alert the public are going to be,” he added.

Basu was speaking days after a man was charged with carrying out a series of violent attacks targeting Muslims in Edinburgh. Lewis Hawkes, 36, did not enter a plea to charges including attempted murder with a “terrorist connection” during a court hearing last week.

For an attack to formally be treated as terrorism by British authorities, it must fulfil the definition laid out in the Terrorism Act 2000. The law states violence must be designed to influence the government, or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and be “for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.

The last part of the legal test has been proving increasingly difficult for the police and prosecutors, particularly where solo perpetrators are influenced by mental health issues and personal grievances.

Basu said the definition was drawn up when most attacks were directed by structured groups like the IRA and al-Qaeda, but that the vast majority are now launched by “self-initiated terrorists” with no formal links to terrorist organisations.

“Sometimes it is very hard to find the ideology,” Basu said. “It is about wading through digital evidence, it’s about interviews, it’s about trying to be absolutely certain that you’re not going to wrongly label somebody as a terrorist.

“There is a real purpose in taking the time to get it right, but the downside is people thinking: ‘Well, you’re very quick to declare it when it’s a brown man against a white man, but you’re very slow when it’s a white man against a brown man’.”

Several attacks targeting Muslims have not been formally confirmed as terrorism until days, weeks or even months after they took place, whereas many jihadist attacks have been publicly confirmed as terrorism by authorities within 24 hours.

Basu says years of Isis propaganda created patterns of behaviour that made it “very easy to declare” incidents inspired by the group, whereas few right-wing attackers have made their allegiance clear through the writing of manifestos or other tactics.

If prosecutors charge an attacker before counter-terror police are confident they have established their motivation, a public terrorism declaration is unlikely to be made out of fear of influencing jurors at a future trial, Basu said.

The responsibility then passes to the criminal justice process, which can involve either charges for terror offences, or the use of “terrorism connection” protocols where judges rule on motivation at sentencing hearings.

Basu added: “You should never ever declare a terrorist attack until you’re certain – you don’t want to scare the living daylights out of the public.

“That’s why we don’t leave it to politicians. You don’t get to decide something is a terror attack because it was committed by people you dislike, or wasn’t a terrorist attack because it’s committed by people who might vote for you.”

But Basu said police should explain the reason for any delay in declaring terror attacks and ensure affected communities know issues are being taken seriously.

After the most recent formally declared terror attack targeting Muslims, it took more than nine months for the incident to be confirmed as terrorism.

Alina Burns, then 18, attempted to behead an Iranian asylum seeker with an axe in Bristol on 2 August last year. Burns, a neo-Nazi, had written online that she wanted all Muslims in Britain to be killed and chose a local Turkish barbershop as her target.

But it was not until she was sentenced for attempted murder on 15 May that a judge ruled the case had a “terrorist connection”, and that following a period of “online self-radicalisation” Burns had committed the attack to advance her extreme right-wing cause.

The first attack targeting Muslims in the last decade came in June 2017, when Darren Osborne ploughed a van into worshippers leaving a mosque in London’s Finsbury Park, killing one victim injuring several others. It was the only far-right terror attack in Britain to be declared by police on the same day.

In March 2019, a day after a white nationalist massacred 51 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand, Vincent Fuller rampaged through the Surrey town of Stanwell armed with a knife and baseball bat while shouting that “all Muslims should die”.

Fuller attacked his neighbour’s home and cars with non-white drivers before stabbing a teenager of Bulgarian heritage in the mistaken belief that he was Muslim. His attack was declared as terrorism the following night.

Terror attacks targeting Muslims have increased in frequency since 2022, when a man firebombed a reception facility for small boats in Dover. Andrew Leak, who killed himself shortly afterwards, posted a tweet an hour before the attack where he said Muslim women and children should “burn alive” – but the incident wasn’t declared terrorism until six days later.

In April 2024, a neo-Nazi stabbed an Eritrean man at a hotel previously used to house asylum seekers in Worcester, in an incident which was confirmed to be terrorism after five days.

Callum Parslow, who did not realise the Home Office had recently ended its contract with the hotel, was arrested while trying to post a white supremacist manifesto on X.

Jacob Davey, director of policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said delays in confirming terror attacks targeting Muslims “have an impact on public perception”, and diminish news coverage in ways that “might have a knock-on effect on decision-making” politically.

“We need to have consistency in messaging, and in how threats are approached and addressed,” he added. “It is really important that we recognise the reality of current threats.”