LONDON — The leaders of a British far-right group, which had gained notoriety after President Trump recirculated unverified anti-Muslim videos it had posted on social media, were arrested on Thursday.
Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First, was detained in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the group said, where he was accompanying his deputy, Jayda Fransen, to her court hearing on earlier charges related to using “threatening, abusive, insulting words or behavior” during an anti-Islam speech in August that prosecutors said could qualify as incitement to racial hatred. She has denied the charges.
Shortly after her court appearance, British news media said she was arrested again, this time as part of a police investigation into “an incident at a peace wall” in Belfast on Wednesday.
Earlier, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said on Twitter that detectives investigating speeches made at the Northern Ireland Against Terrorism Rally on Aug. 6 “have arrested a 35-year-old man in the Belfast area today.” The post did not identify Mr. Golding or the offense.
Ms. Fransen, in a video posted on Twitter, said that the man was Mr. Golding, and that he had been detained on “trumped-up charges.” A spokesman for Britain First confirmed the arrest.
Continue reading the main storyAccording to British news reports, a video recorded earlier this week in Belfast and in which Ms. Fransen spoke of the “Islamification of the mainland,” had been posted on the group’s Facebook page. She also described the Belfast Islamic Center as a “den of iniquity.”
Britain First is a fringe group insisting that white Christian civilization is under threat from Muslims. It had received relatively little attention until two weeks ago, when it received an unexpected burst of publicity from Mr. Trump, who recirculated three sometimes-misleading videos that Ms. Fransen had posted on Twitter and which purported to show Muslims committing violent acts against non-Muslims.
Shortly after, Ms. Fransen thanked the president on Twitter. “You’ve shed light on my plight here in Britain, in that I am facing prison for giving a speech in which I criticized Islam,” she wrote. “This is evidence that Britain has become Sharia-compliant,” she added, referring to the Islamic legal code.
Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts drew ire from the British public and lawmakers, including Prime Minister Theresa May, who said he had given a platform to a hate group, a pseudo-paramilitary organization that had attracted the notice of law enforcement.
Britain First emerged in 2011 as an offshoot of the far-right British National Party, and while it has shown some interest in electoral politics, it is best known for its confrontational tactics, particular its storming into mosques and intimidating worshipers. (In her video post on Thursday, Ms. Fransen described herself as a “politician.”)
After Mr. Trump shared Britain First’s videos, Mrs. May said that members of the ultranationalist group sought “to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions.” Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, called Britain First “a divisive, hateful group whose views are not in line with our values.”
Some lawmakers from the opposition Labour Party went further, urging Mrs. May, who leads the Conservative Party, to rescind an invitation to Mr. Trump to pay a state visit to Britain.
“The U.S. President is normalizing hatred,” a Labour member of Parliament, Chuka Umunna, wrote on Twitter. “If we don’t call this out, we are going down a very dangerous road.”
According to a recent survey published by The Independent newspaper, about half of the respondents said the government should withdraw its invitation for a full state visit to Mr. Trump.
But on Tuesday, Woody Johnson, the American ambassador to Britain, appeared to confirm that Mr. Trump was set to visit the country early next year. In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Johnson said the uproar over Mr. Trump’s sharing of videos posted by Britain First was “probably misinterpreted.”
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