Five charged for hate crime in UK

LONDON: British police said on Monday they had charged five people over a suspected hate crime attack on a 17-year-old Kurdish Iranian asylum-seeker in south London.

The teenager was badly beaten by a group of around 20 people while he was at a bus stop with two friends outside a pub in Croydon on Friday night.

"It is understood that the suspects asked the victim where he was form and when they established that he was an asylum-seeker, they chased him and launched a brutal attack," police investigator Gary Castle said.

"He sustained serious head and facial injuries as a result of this attack, which included repeated blows to the head by a large group of attackers," he said.

Castle condemned violence against "those who have come to London to seek refuge and a place of safety."

Police said the teenager’s condition was "serious but stable and is not believed to be life-threatening."