Trump: Islamic extremism to blame for UK crime rise

Washington, Oct 20 (IANS) US President Donald Trump said on Friday that violence by Islamic extremists was behind an increase in criminal offences in the United Kingdom.

Trump was referring to a report published on Thursday by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) which said that between June 2016 and June 2017, the police recorded 5.2 million crimes in England and Wales, up by 13 per cent from the previous 12-month period.

"Just out report: 'United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.' Not good, we must keep America safe!" Trump said in a tweet.

The ONS report referred to terrorist attacks in London and Manchester in providing its figure on homicides, which totalled 664 between June 2016 and June 2017, Efe news reported.

The report said the "recent trends in homicide have been affected by the recording of incidents where there were multiple victims" such as the attack in March at the Westminster Bridge and the Manchester Arena bombing in May.

The ONS said that "of the 664 homicides recorded in the year ending June 2017, there were 35 relating to the London and Manchester terror attacks", both of which were determined to be Islamist-related terrorist incidents.

Trump's tweet comes three days after a Hawaii federal judge partially blocked his latest revised travel ban which was to take effect on October 18.

The ruling by Judge Derrick Watson, followed by a decision hours later by a Maryland judge, found that the ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim nations "suffered from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor" and "plainly discriminated based on nationality".

Watson struck down the part of Trump's executive order affecting potential arrivals from six Muslim-majority countries -- Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad.

But his decision does not affect the ban on travel to the US by citizens of North Korea and by some officials from Venezuela.