The Case Keeps Growing — 17 Arrested, 14 Charged

Since the Southampton protests erupted following Vickrum Digwa's life sentence last Monday, the arrest count has now reached 17, with 14 people formally charged with violent disorder, according to BBC News.

Hampshire Police confirmed three new charges Saturday: Darren Medhurst, 36, Jordan Hambleton, 19, and Callum Darch, 27. All three have been remanded into custody and are due at Southampton Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Four additional men — aged 18, 34, 41, and 45 — remain in police custody, arrested on suspicion of violent disorder. A 16-year-old girl from Southampton was also arrested and released on conditional bail pending further inquiries.

To date, eight of those charged have already pleaded guilty. One man also faces a charge of carrying an offensive weapon — a dog lead fitted with a metal carabiner. Eleven police officers and a police dog were injured during the Tuesday protests.

Hampshire Police Tried to Frame Nowak as the Aggressor

According to a report in The Times of London, cited by Breitbart, Hampshire Police initially released a statement implying that Henry Nowak had started the fight and assaulted Vickrum Digwa and his brother. That statement was later dropped after pushback from the Nowak family.

The same police force that handcuffed an 18-year-old as he lay bleeding to death — while an officer told him "I don't think you have" been stabbed — then went on to publicly imply he was the aggressor.

This happened despite the Southampton Crown Court later hearing that police had uncritically accepted a false narrative pushed by the Digwa family: that Nowak had been racially abusive. That claim was thoroughly debunked at trial.

Then Police Tried to Issue a Mid-Trial Statement — CPS Blocked It

According to The Times, after the trial began and international commentary — including posts by Elon Musk — spread online, Hampshire Police sought to issue a rare mid-trial public statement warning the public about "misinformation."

A Constabulary spokeswoman told The Times: "Following the opening of the trial and the media reporting that followed, a significant amount of mis- and disinformation was circulating online."

The Crown Prosecution Service shut it down. The CPS told police that "protecting the integrity of the ongoing trial was essential" and that any statement referencing evidence before it had been heard by the jury created serious legal risk.

The police force that failed Henry Nowak wanted to use the cover of a live trial to address online criticism — and it took prosecutors to stop them.

Lammy Calls Vance. But Vance Isn't the Only Problem Here.

On Saturday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy rang US Vice President JD Vance directly and told him he was "wrong" to blame Henry Nowak's murder on mass migration, according to BBC News. Vance had posted on X Friday that Nowak died "the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him."

Lammy is correct on one narrow point: Digwa was born in the UK. This was NOT a case of a foreign migrant committing a crime. Vance used the wrong fact to make a broader argument, and Lammy was right to call it out.

Vance's underlying charge — that Nowak was "abandoned" and "handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him" — is factually accurate. That's exactly what the bodycam footage shows. That's exactly what The Times' reporting on the police's initial attempt to blame Nowak confirms.

Lammy is correcting the immigration framing while the British government has yet to account for why the police force under its watch behaved as it did.

What Mainstream Media Is Getting Wrong

BBC's coverage focuses almost entirely on the Lammy-Vance diplomatic spat and the arrest numbers. It is giving minimal attention to the Times of London's reporting on Hampshire Police's conduct — specifically the attempt to portray Nowak as an aggressor and the attempt to issue a mid-trial statement.

Breitbart is covering the police misconduct angle aggressively — and the reporting holds up on the facts. Left-leaning outlets are treating the Vance immigration claim as the main story because it lets them keep the focus on American right-wing politics. The police conduct story is far more damaging to the British establishment, and it's getting far less air.

The Outstanding Questions

A British teenager was stabbed to death. The man who killed him lied to police and claimed he was the victim. Police believed the liar, cuffed the dying boy, then drafted a statement blaming the dead teenager — before prosecutors intervened.

Fourteen people are now charged for rioting in response to all of that. Some of those rioters threw wheelie bins at cops and deserve what's coming to them. But the fury that put them in the streets came from somewhere real.

The British government still hasn't answered questions about Hampshire Police's conduct: Who authorized that initial statement blaming Nowak? Who ordered the mid-trial statement attempt? And are any of those officers facing consequences?

Lammy corrected Vance's facts on immigration. Now the government needs to correct its own house.