Home Office Unit Advised Police on Messaging After Belfast Stabbing and Resulting Protests

The Research, Information and Communications Unit advised police during unrest in Belfast after Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid stabbed Stephen Ogilvie, a vulnerable special needs man. RICU worked with the Police Service of Northern Ireland's C3 intelligence unit to identify people posting online calls to protest and gave strategic messages to portray protesters as unsympathetic thugs rather than activists.

RICU also briefed the liaison team dealing with Ogilvie's family.

A source said the unit made sure the team was well briefed and noted that family statements in such cases often share a similar tone. The same unit provided strategic input to police handling the family of Henry Nowak after Vickrum Digwa murdered him.

RICU was founded in 2007 by Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, and operates from Home Office headquarters under the Prevent counter-terrorism program.

Its methods include planting media stories, deploying undercover operatives, and shaping online conversations. Sir William Shawcross stated in his 2023 review of Prevent that the bar for what RICU includes on Islamism looks relatively high, whereas the bar for what is included on the extreme Right-wing is comparably low.

The unit has flagged watching Michael Portillo's programmes, reading Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton, or books documenting grooming gang scandals as potential indicators of far-Right susceptibility, and it has linked Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg to sympathetic audiences.

A Home Office spokesman stated that RICU provides analysis on extremist use of propaganda and exploitation of the internet to inform the UK's counter terrorism system and that the department cannot comment on its operations. The unit pushed for expanded recording of non-crime hate incidents, measures that were later scrapped after public backlash.