A teenager has been charged in connection with an arson attack on a Jewish charity’s ambulances in March, U.K. police announced, making them the fifth person to face charges over the incident.
The March fire in Golders Green, a north London neighborhood with a large Jewish community, destroyed four ambulances belonging to Hatzola Northwest, a Jewish volunteer organization that provides medical services in the area.
In a statement Tuesday, London’s Metropolitan Police identified the fifth suspect as 18-year-old British national Subhan Ahmed, charged with “assisting an offender.”
The other men allegedly involved in the attack are 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan, 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi, and a 17-year-old boy whose name cannot be disclosed for legal reasons. All four face charges of “committing arson destroying or damaging property being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The five men are scheduled to stand trial in January 2027.
Counterterror police are investigating the fire as an antisemitic hate crime and examining claims of responsibility by a group allegedly tied to Iran.
Speaking to CBS News following the incident, a member of the group — known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous — said they would “keep threatening U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide until we’ve avenged every child in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and the resistance nations.”
London has experienced a string of antisemitic attacks in recent months, including arson targeting synagogues and other Jewish sites. In late April, two men were wounded in a stabbing attack in Golders Green that authorities declared a terrorist incident.
“It’s utter horror,” an Orthodox Jewish resident, who requested anonymity, told CBS News after the attack. “I can’t believe what’s going on. We have to live in fear — constantly looking behind our backs, wondering if someone might attack us with a knife … and even if we leave, where do we go? There are people trying to attack us everywhere.”
Europe has also recorded a recent rise in antisemitic incidents, including an explosion outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam and attacks outside synagogues in Liege, Belgium, and Rotterdam in the Netherlands in April.
In March, authorities charged two men with conducting “hostile” surveillance of Jews in London on behalf of Iran, while officials in France foiled a suspected terror plot targeting Jewish sites.
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