After making threats to kill Jews on a North London bus, a Hackney man was charged on Friday, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, Metropolitan Police, and North and East London Shomrim.
Fifty year old James Agius was charged with religiously aggravated harassment and using threatening words for the alleged abuse of Orthodox Jews on a bus traveling through Stamford Hill on Thursday.
The Met told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that Agius was suspected of making threats to kill. Shomrim said on X on Thursday that a male suspect had boarded a bus in Hackney and threatened to kill Jewish children while also claiming to possess a knife. The Met said that a search of the suspect yielded no weapon.
“Shame Hitler didn’t kill you,” the suspect said, according to the Shomrim. “You should all go in the gas chambers.”
The bus driver reportedly stopped the bus and activated an emergency alarm. Members of the public and Shomrim volunteers intervened and helped detain the man, according to the Jewish neighborhood watch group.
“The Met takes incidents of this nature incredibly seriously,” said the law enforcement agency. “The incident is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime and our enquiries continue.”
The threat of using a knife against London Jews comes following last Wednesday’s stabbing attack in Golders Green, in which two Jewish residents were wounded.