A man accused of bursting into a blind woman’s flat has been arrested on suspicion of common assault.
The suspect, aged in his 20s, was living at the Britannia Hotel, and was being held by police in Hackney, east London, in the early hours of this morning.
He is said to have entered the house on Wednesday night after being followed by a group of men on the street and told to ‘go back to the hotel’ where anti-migrant protesters were gathered outside.
The Met has now said he is no longer living there.
A spokesperson for the police this morning said: ‘Our investigation continued on Thursday, with officers carrying out extensive CCTV enquiries and speaking to witnesses.
‘As a result of this, in the early hours of this morning – Friday, 15 August – we arrested a man in the Hackney area on suspicion of common assault. He is believed to be in his early 20s.
‘We can confirm that this is the man who allegedly entered the flat. He is now in police custody.’
A 22-year-old woman who was arrested on Wednesday evening and lives at the flat which was entered has since been charged with a number of offences.
Channay Augustus, 22, of Tower Hamlets, has been charged with possession of an offensive weapon, affray, assault on an emergency worker, common assault and possession of cannabis.
The charges of affray and common assault relate to an altercation at the hotel on Wednesday evening.
The alleged victim of the common assault is a security guard at the hotel, not the man who allegedly entered her flat, police say.
Augustus has been remanded in custody to appear at Thames Magistrates’ Court later this morning.
The hotel in London has been a focus of protests in recent weeks after Tower Hamlets Council confirmed it had been handed over to the Home Office to house asylum seekers.
Another group of up to 50 migrants arrived at the hotel yesterday morning before being hurried inside by guards.
The men were brought to the site in coaches at 5.34am and told to run into the lobby to avoid cameras.
Last week, a crowd of anti-migrant protesters descended on the hotel to be met by counter demonstrators.
Officers were seen pinning some activists on the ground, with two arrests made.
One was an anti-migrant protester who was detained after a bottle was thrown at officers.
The other was a member of the counter-protest group who was arrested for failing to remove their face covering.
Police had to rapidly mobilise to contain a group of ‘anti-fascist’ activists arriving at South Quay station to confront anti-migrant protesters as they held signs that said ‘no human is illegal’ and chanted: ‘Refugees have the right – here to stay, here to fight.’
More than a hundred police officers moved to kettle the group outside the tube station for breaching the peace.
People then made their way into the town as the main road outside the hotel was closed.
Dozens were carrying flags, leading chants of ‘Keir Starmer is a w*****’ and ‘send them home’.
This week, it was revealed that a record 107 small boat migrants reached Britain in just one dinghy on Wednesday, confounding Labour’s pledge to ‘smash the gangs’.
Images from the port of Dover showed human traffickers have begun to deploy a new, longer type of inflatable.
The dinghy – which can barely be described as a ‘small boat’ – was recovered in the Channel and taken to Dover, where it was being examined by Border Force and law enforcement, GB News reported.
The appearance of the larger type of dinghy further undermines Labour’s decision to concentrate on law enforcement responses to ‘smash the gangs’.
Keir Starmer scrapped the previous Conservative government’s Rwanda asylum scheme as one of his first acts in office, just as it was finally ready to get off the ground.
The Rwanda scheme was designed to make crossing the Channel pointless, because migrants would be sent to Rwanda to claim asylum there instead of here.
On Monday alone there were 474 Channel arrivals, pushing the total past 50,000 since Labour came to power.