Archie Bland
speaker
226 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 13 Jul
Archie Bland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It looked initially like this was not viewed as a terror offence, but that's all shifted.
It is a messy picture.
It is one of these things where this crime story, which needs to be reported very responsibly and straightforwardly, comes into collision with a very opinion-driven news and political cycle.
Farage, as he says, one thing I wouldn't speculate about is the thing which he then goes on to speculate.
That's right.
So we know that in the first place, this was under investigation by counter-terror police.
And the conclusion was reached at that stage that there did not appear to be a terrorist motive in this case.
And it was passed back to the conventional police.
But the situation has evolved since then.
A second suspect, not the man who was originally arrested, has now been arrested and the case is being investigated by counter-terror police specifically.
He's also been arrested on suspicion of terror offences as well as the initial murder suspicion that has now been drawn into that arena more generally as well.
So it looked initially like this was not viewed as a terror offence, but that's all shifted.
So what we can say is what would typically be the case, which is that if somebody appears to be ideologically motivated, and if they appear to be motivated with an intention of influencing or intimidating politicians or the public in their action, then that can be classed as a terrorist offence.
But we can't say specifically what the evidence is in this case that has drawn the police to that conclusion, at least at this stage.
So we know that he's 28 years old and that he was arrested at an address in Rotherham.
And it was reported that neighbours saw on the day of Anne Widdicombe's death, him getting into a red car and that he had some kind of pole that he took with him on that journey.
But again, because of the status of the investigation and the fact that we're awaiting a charging decision, we still don't have that much that we can say at this point.
Yeah, and it is a messy picture, to be sure.
I mean, we have a couple of different things going on at the same time.
One is a evolving picture of the police investigation, and it is relatively unusual, we should say, for a terrorist motivation to appear to have been ruled out only for the case to ultimately return to the hands of counter-terror police.
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