Two men pleaded guilty to charges for filming antisemitic harassment in London for social media videos, according to the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service.
Twenty year old Adam Bedoui and 21 year old Abdelkader Amir Bousloub were each charged with religiously aggravated intentional harassment and intentional harassment, after the West Drayton residents went to Clapton Common on Thursday to film Jews for TikTok content.
In the predominantly Jewish area, the pair approached a Jewish man and filmed themselves verbally abusing him. Police were called to the scene of the incident, and were caught by officers when they attempted to flee.
“This was a deliberate and targeted antisemitic attack, aggravated by the pair’s intention to post the incident on social media to spread hatred. It is completely unacceptable and has no place in London,” Hackney and Tower Hamlets policing head Detective Superintendent Oliver Richter said in a press statement. “Our officers acted quickly to arrest those responsible, and within 48 hours they have been brought before the courts and convicted. That should send a clear message – we will act decisively against anyone who commits hate crime.”
Bedoui and Bousloub are not the first social media content creators to target Jews in London. Harry Marsh, known online as Penofein, made multiple videos in which he threw coins at Stamford Hill Jews and tried to purchase the phone numbers of Jewish women, according to the Jewish Chronicle.
Marsh’s YouTube and TikTok videos have been deleted, and on April 15 the Met told The Jerusalem Post that they were investigating the matter.
“Hate crime of any kind has no place in our communities and we take all reports incredibly seriously,” the Met said at the time.
Arrest of Bedoui and Bousloub at the scene of the incident occurs after the Met announced on Wednesday a new Community Protection Team of 100 officers to address rising antisemitic incidents. The Met said they had arrested 50 people for antisemitic crimes in the last four weeks alone. Ten had been charged, with CPS announcing on Monday that it had updated its guidelines to allow for quicker charging of hate crimes in response to rising antisemitic incidents.