A 38-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage after Winston Churchill’s statue outside the Houses of Parliament was sprayed with graffiti labelling the former prime minister a “Zionist war criminal”.

The Metropolitan police arrested Caspar San Giorgio, of no fixed address, shortly after 4am on Friday. He was charged in the early hours of Saturday morning and is due to appear at Highbury Corner magistrates court shortly.

Phrases including “stop the genocide” and “free Palestine” were also sprayed in red paint on the bronze sculpture in Parliament Square, central London. Other graffiti read “never again is now” and “globalise the intifada”.

Last December, the Met and Greater Manchester police said that anyone chanting the slogan “globalise the intifada” would face arrest. San Giorgio has been charged with criminal damage.

The decision by the two police forces came after two terror attacks: at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester in October last year, and at Bondi Beach in Australia in December.

The statue was cordoned off after the attack and cleaned on Friday morning.

Shortly after the incident, a Greater London Authority spokesperson said: “We are appalled by this vandalism to the statue of Sir Winston Churchill and work is under way to remove the graffiti as quickly as possible.”

Downing Street also said the apparent vandalism of the statue was “completely abhorrent”.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “Churchill was a great Briton. This government will always stand up for our values and the perpetrator must be held to account.”

Chruchill’s statue has been vandalised several times in the past, including during protests. Graffiti accusing Churchill of being a racist was written on it in June 2020 during a Black Lives Matter protest triggered by the death of George Floyd in the US.

Later that year, in October, an Extinction Rebellion activist was ordered to pay more than £1,500 after defacing the statue by painting “racist” on its plinth during a climate protest.

The 3.6-metre monument, created by Ivor Roberts-Jones, was unveiled in 1973 by the former prime minister’s wife, Clementine Churchill. It is one of 12 statues on or around Parliament Square, most of well-known statesmen, including Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela.