UK police say 11 people have been arrested as part of the UK Football Policing Unit’s (UKFPU) countrywide hate crime inquiry into the racist messages addressed to England’s football players.
National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on Thursday said a total of 207 social media accounts had sent the racist messages, and 123 of them were outside the UK.
“Where there have been responses, this information has been passed on to local forces who have so far arrested 11 people across the UK,” NPCC said in a statement.
It said the suspects were arrested on suspicion of a number of offences, including malicious communications and breaching Section 127 of the Communications Act, 2003.
UKFPU said it was expecting additional data to identify the rest of 50 account holders as long as 34 accounts belonged to the UK citizens.
The UK football policing unit added that it had made requests to social media to get more precise data for the investigation.
On July 11, the English team lost to Italy in the EURO 2020 final at the Wembley Stadium in London.
After the game, England’s players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka who failed to score in a penalty shootout were subjected to a hate campaign on social media.
Football Policing Lead Mark Roberts says investigating social media crimes is difficult, but the offenders will not escape justice, thanks to assistance from the social media companies and proactive search techniques.
Twitter said it had deleted over a thousand racist comments directed at the football players.
Facebook also assured the public on Monday it was making every effort to delete the abusive content as soon as possible and called on the users to contribute to the process.