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A man admitted on Wednesday to daubing the word “Islam” on a war memorial in central London and damaging the nearby Australian War Memorial by ripping a piece off.
Andrew Patterson, 31, vandalised the Royal Air Force Bomber Command Memorial with graffiti on May 27 last year.
The act occurred at a tense time, five days after a British soldier was brutally hacked to death in a London street by two Islamist attackers.
Westminster Magistrates Court in London heard that Patterson also wrote “Islam” on the national Animals in War Memorial on May 27.
Earlier, between May 17 and 20, he caused £11,550 ($19,500, 14,050 euros) of damage to the Australian War Memorial when he stole its Rising Sun plaque — the army service emblem. Several bronze letters also went missing.
Police recovered the plaque and returned it to the Australian High Commission in September.
The damage to the Bomber Command Memorial was £6,500, while that to the animals memorial was put at £2,766.
Between May 2012 and June 2013, Patterson carried out 94 offences of criminal damage in London, smashing windows, scrawling graffiti and slashing car tyres, repeatedly targeting homes and a Baptist church.
The offences were brought together into 15 charges, which Patterson’s lawyer admitted on his behalf.
District judge John Zani committed the case to Southwark Crown Court for sentencing, on a date yet to be decided.
Patterson was granted bail on condition that he continues to reside at a psychiatric institution in west London.
The Bomber Command Memorial is dedicated to the 55,573 air crew from Britain, the wider Commonwealth, Czechoslovakia and Poland who died in World War II, plus those killed in raids.
It was officially unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012.
The Australian War Memorial commemorates those who served in World Wars I and II by listing the names of the 23,844 towns in which they were born.
The names of 47 of the battles in which they fought are superimposed, with water running down over the granite.
The Queen opened the memorial in 2003.