The attack with incendiary devices on a migrant reception center in Dover in the south of England last Sunday is a “terrorist act”, announced this Saturday the British anti-terrorist police in charge of the investigation. “Having reviewed the evidence collected thus far, and while strong evidence indicates that the mental health of the suspect is certainly a factor, I am satisfied that the suspect’s actions were primarily motivated by ideological extremism, which meets the definition of a terrorist act,” Tim Jacques, a senior British counter-terrorism police officer, was quoted in a statement as saying.
700 migrants evacuated
Last Sunday around 11:20 a.m., several incendiary devices were thrown at a migrant reception center in Dover. The suspect had arrived alone by car before launching the devices. Two officers were slightly injured and 700 migrants had to be temporarily escorted to another site. The attack came as the UK records a record number of migrant arrivals on the country’s southern coasts in small boats. With nearly 40,000 having already succeeded in the perilous crossing of the Channel since the start of the year, this is already far more than in 2021 as a whole.
The suspect, Andrew Leak, a 66-year-old man living in High Wycombe, north-west London, was found dead in his car shortly after the attack. According to the British press, he would have ended his life, which the authorities have not yet officially confirmed. The elements of the investigation collected so far “suggest that there was an extreme right motivation behind this attack”, explains the anti-terrorist police in its press release.
Isolated authors
“There is currently nothing to suggest that the man involved worked with other people and nothing to suggest the existence of a broader threat at this time” further specifies the police. Opposition Labor Security MP Yvette Cooper tweeted that it was “very serious” that the attack had far-right motives, and called for “highest vigilance on potential attacks”. terrorists or extremists”.
A parliamentary report released last July said the number of far-right terrorist attacks “has not increased significantly in recent years, although there have been a number of cases and convictions” of people who carried out or planned attacks. The threat is increasingly coming from lone perpetrators, according to experts cited in the report, which mentions in particular the assassination of Labor MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by far-right activist Thomas Mair, or the attack of a vehicle against a mosque in London in June 2017.