The Metropolitan Police is investigating death threats against Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the UK's Labour Party, after Boris Johnson's earlier claim that Starmer "failed to prosecute" Jimmy Savile, The Guardian reported Sunday.
According to the report, Scotland Yard has received a "cache of evidence", which included "a number of apparently identifiable users on the messaging app Telegram who called for the Labour party leader to be hung or 'executed'".
The reported evidence was sent to the Met by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) - a group that is working to tackle online hate.
Last week, Starmer and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy were ambushed by protesters, some of whom yelled “traitor” and “Jimmy Savile”. The Labour leader blamed Johnson for inciting the incident by accusing him earlier in February of failing to take action against Savile during his tenure as head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
“I have never been called a paedophile protector before," Starmer told The Times shortly after the incident. "If others want to argue that this is unconnected with precisely what the PM said one week before then let them make that case. But they’ll never persuade me that there is no link.”
The prime minister, however, was quick to condemn the crowd that attacked Starmer and accused him of "protecting paedophiles" as "absolutely disgraceful".
Earlier, when Johnson accused Starmer of not prosecuting Starmer, the PM had to admit that the opposition leader "had nothing to do personally" with the decision by the CPS not to take action against the paedophile during his tenure at the agency.
Starmer was the head of the CPS from 2008 to 2013, and the decision not to prosecute Savile (who died in 2011) was taken in 2009.
Jimmy Savile was an British TV and radio personality, who had faced multiple accusations of sexual abuse, including of minors. Allegations of him being a predatory sex offender emerged during his lifetime but were largely ignored; the majority of them were resurfaced after his death.