Far-right extremists like Finsbury mosque attacker Darren Osborne justify their behaviour by blaming Muslims, 7/7 terror detective David Videcette writes.

How many times have you heard, "It’s the West’s foreign policy toward the Middle East that causes Islamic terrorism" or "It’s Israel's policy toward the Palestinians that is the cause of Palestinian terrorism"?

As a former counter-terror detective with Scotland Yard, I’ve heard it many times.

Indeed it is often cited by suspects under arrest for Islamist terror offences during their interviews, or as a justification for their behaviour.

So, I wasn’t surprised to hear Darren Osborne saying in court during his terrorism trial for the attempted murder of pedestrians outside Finsbury Park mosque, that he’d justified his violent thoughts to himself using a mirrored form of logic based on his own framework of beliefs.


He claimed that the Al Quds March - where people waved Hezbollah flags on London’s streets, so soon after three Islamists terror attacks in the UK during 2017 - was a primary motivator for him to carry out his own terror attack.

However, when it came to the actual admission of the act he was charged with, he at various points claimed that he was in the footwell of the van and that someone called Dave was driving.

Image: Darren Osborne

We have a growing problem with far-right extremism in the UK.

Almost a third of those people referred to the government's Prevent strategy, the programme aimed at combating violent extremism with mentoring before violence takes place, were far right extremists.

While arrests for far-right extremism are in the minority of terror arrests (8%), the actual scale of the problem is likely masked by arrests for other minor public order offences that are not recorded centrally by government.

The warning signs have been there for some time.

While the motive for the murder of Jo Cox in 2016 was not legally proven in court as terrorism, many, including myself, felt that it was politically motivated and should be classed as a terror attack.

Osborne’s attack at Finsbury Park mosque was carried out just a few days after the first anniversary of Cox’s murder.

The evidence is quite stark. You need only look at any social media platform and see the polarisation of the views there.

The Islamists blaming the West’s Foreign Policy and the far-right, and far-right extremists blaming Muslims and anyone on the left that opposes their view.

In fact we now have cottage industries for commentators who try to out-do each other with their hateful views of their opposition, with the moderate and balanced voices of sensible people lost in the melee.

Image: The 7/7 attacks in London in 2005 killed 52 people

Two weeks after the 7/7 bombings in 2005, which claimed the lives of 52 people and four suicide bombers, another four Islamist extremists attempted to repeat the attack.

On 21/7, they failed simply because of an error in the mixture of the home-made explosives.

One of the men who tried to blow himself up, claimed that it was a prank gone wrong; a publicity stunt.

Like Darren Osborne, he wasn’t man enough to admit his intention to murder others.

Happy to talk hypothetically, but in the cold light of day, when looked in the eye and asked to justify what he’d done, he cowered behind lies and half-truths, just like Osborne.

Psychologically, I see this perpetrator of 21/7 as almost indistinguishable from Osborne.

Indeed, new research from Uppsala University in Sweden shows that the same psychological mechanism explains violence among both Muslim and Western extremists.

Though they come from different religions and are opposed to one another, telling them apart is difficult.

These men are both racist ideologues and products of an increasingly divided society, where the charismatic shape their political views using religion, hate and opportunism.

:: David Videcette is a former counter-terror detective with Scotland Yard and an expert on the 7/7 and 21/7 London bombings. He is the author of The Theseus Paradox.