Scottish authorities said on Saturday (June 20, 2026) they charged a man in connection with attacks in Edinburgh that wounded five people, with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying the suspect “appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred”.

Police Scotland said officers had arrested a 36-year-old white Scottish man and there was “no further threat to the public”.

“A 36-year-old man has been charged in connection with a number of incidents which took place in Edinburgh on Friday, 19 June, 2026,” police said late Saturday (June 20, 2026).

“A report has been submitted to the Procurator Fiscal, and the individual will appear at court in due course.”

Footage posted online showed a bare-chested man, believed to be the suspect, roaming streets of the Scottish capital with a large weapon.

A police statement said they received multiple emergency calls late Friday (June 19, 2026) from people reporting “violent attacks including threats, robbery and vandalism across Edinburgh, with five men injured”.

The victims, two aged 22, and others aged 24, 27, and 39, sustained various injuries, police said. Three were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the statement said, adding the incident is being investigated by the counter-terrorism unit and other police officers.

Politicians in London and Scotland condemned the incidents.

“Absolutely appalling,” Mr. Starmer said on X. “The suspect appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred. I will not tolerate this — he will face the full force of the law.”

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said he was “deeply concerned”, in a post on X. “There is no place for violence, racism or intolerance in our country,” he added.

‘Should concern everyone’

Both the Scottish Association of Mosques and the anti-Islamophobia non-profit Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) said several of the victims were Muslims.

MEND noted the alleged footage of the arrested man circulating online also showed him shouting about “protecting the country” from Muslims, accompanied by expletive-filled language.

The organisation urged police to “treat this as what the evidence indicates: Islamophobic, far-right terror”.

The mosques association noted: “In recent days we have seen calls for anti-migrant protests circulating online, alongside increasingly aggressive rhetoric directed at minority communities.

“These developments should concern everyone, regardless of faith or background.”

The incident comes as immigration and diversity in the U.K. take the spotlight, with claims that far-right agitators are fuelling racist sentiment, after a number of reported high-profile incidents in the region.

The Northern Irish capital, Belfast, experienced two nights of disorder last week after a knife attack, allegedly perpetrated by a Sudanese refugee, was captured on camera and went viral online.

There were also violent skirmishes between protesters and police the previous week in Southampton, in southern England, over the handling of the murder of young white student Henry Nowak by a British Sikh man.

Detailing Friday (June 19, 2026) night’s incidents, Police Scotland said two men were initially injured in a west Edinburgh suburb and taken to hospital.

The BBC said it understood the attacks began near a mosque.

Three other men were subsequently attacked elsewhere, suffering different injuries, before officers confronted and arrested the suspect, police said.

Published – June 21, 2026 08:56 am IST

The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed ‌for calm on Wednesday (June 10, 2026) after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men ​burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles.

The appeal came as a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with ⁠attempted murder, and as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians in Northern Ireland condemned the violence by “masked thugs” that had targeted ethnic minorities.

Hundreds of protesters, many with their faces covered, had attacked police and burned vehicles in some locations across Northern Ireland late on Tuesday (June 9) after a video of the knife ‌attack went viral.

“We want to make it absolutely clear that overnight unrest is not welcome, and peaceful protest is the only way forward,” the family of the victim, Stephen Ogilvie, said in a statement. “We have many migrants who make a ‌deeply valuable contribution to our country. We do not want this tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,” ‌it ⁠said.

Speaking in Parliament in London, PM Starmer said the attack raised serious questions but that “driving people out of their homes is not ⁠the right way to respond”, adding that all those involved in violence would face “the full force of the law”.

The suspect in the attack in north Belfast, a 30-year-old Sudanese national named as Hadi Alodid, appeared in court on Wednesday (June 10) where he was remanded in custody. Mr. Ogilvie, who is in his 40s, suffered significant injuries to his face and back, ​the court heard.

‘THAT’S MY PROPERTY’ Videos of the attack had ‌circulated online all day on Tuesday (June 9), sparking calls on social media for violent protest.

Police had to help one family escape from a burning house. Several cars and a bus were set on fire and reduced to shells. Local politicians and a pastor said many of those who were targeted were Black. Resident Jamie Corry, 33, said he could only watch on as his house went up in flames. “I ‌was actually standing right there watching my whole house just go up, slowly but surely,” he told Reuters.

“I told them and ​all, when they were lighting a car up on fire, that’s my property, that’s my property, and they still didn’t care.” Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill described the violence perpetrated by the masked men as “nothing less than disgusting cowardice”. The ⁠attack, which is currently not being treated as terrorism, comes at a time of heightened tensions in Britain following the murder of a student who was handcuffed by police as he lay dying from stab wounds after his killer, a Sikh man, falsely alleged a racist attack.

It also follows repeated ‌protests about immigration, with populist parties saying Britain’s asylum policy had allowed dangerous men into the country. Tech billionaire Elon Musk reposted many messages denouncing the state of the United Kingdom following the Belfast incident.

Bad faith actors

Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister Naomi Long told Reuters that “bad faith actors” who would have previously struggled to find the Province on a map had sought to weaponise people’s understandable fear and anger over the knife attack to target those who had the same skin colour. Amid calls from Mr. Musk, anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson, and others for more protests on Wednesday (June 10), Northern Ireland’s police chief said an extra 200 officers were being deployed on the streets.

“These idiots didn’t just target ethnic minority groups; they targeted society,” Chief Constable Jon Boutcher ‌said. Belfast pastor Jack McKee told the BBC that some members of his church, who had lived there for 20 years, were “getting put out just because they’re Black”.

The disorder ​in Northern Ireland is the latest violence to flare in the U.K. in response to a crime, often believed to involve a migrant, which has led to calls from some prominent anti-Islam and anti-immigrant activists for people to “take to the streets”.

Immigration ⁠has historically been low in Northern Ireland due to the three-decade conflict waged between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists seeking Irish unity and predominantly Protestant pro-British “loyalists” wanting ⁠to stay in the United Kingdom, and the British military.

However, migration has increased in recent years, and there has been a hardening sentiment against it in both Northern Ireland and parts of the Republic of Ireland. According to the 2021 census, 96.6% of those ‌living in Northern Ireland were white, while police statistics showed recorded numbers of racist incidents hit a record level in 2025. Northern Ireland was also hit by anti-immigrant rioting last year amid anger over an alleged sexual assault. Charges against two boys were later withdrawn by prosecutors. 

Published – June 10, 2026 07:53 pm IST