Hamas, the group responsible for the deadly October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, has begun a legal push to overturn its classification as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
The challenge was submitted to the UK Home Office and includes a formal witness statement from senior Hamas figure Mousa Abu Marzouq, who is disputing the group’s current banned status, the report said.
In his statement, which was published by Drop Site News, Abu Marzouq declared, “The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century. Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people.”
Hamas contends that it is not a terrorist entity but rather a “Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.”
The Home Office declined to issue a comment on the matter, citing its policy of not speaking on ongoing legal proceedings.
The UK first added Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, to its list of proscribed terror groups in 2001. That designation was expanded in 2021 to include Hamas’s political division, with then-Home Secretary Priti Patel stating that the distinction between the two was meaningless and that Hamas functions as one unified terrorist body.
Under British law, any organization labeled as a terrorist group is banned entirely, making it a crime to belong to it, support it, or publicly display its insignia.
Hamas’s legal filing further argues that the UK’s stance has chilled free expression and stifled open conversation.
“Rather than allow freedom of speech, police have embarked on a campaign of political intimidation and persecution of journalists, academics, peace activists and students over their perceived support for Hamas,” their lawyers wrote. “People in Britain must be free to speak about Hamas and its struggle to restore to the Palestinian people the right to self-determination.”
The legal documents also claim that the proscription violates international legal commitments, including Britain’s responsibilities to prevent genocide and challenge what Hamas describes as Israel’s “illegal occupation” of Palestinian land. Hamas is described in the brief as “the only effective military force resisting” such actions.
Responding to the challenge, Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel stood by her original position, saying, “Hamas is an evil Iranian-backed terrorist organisation, which kidnaps, tortures and murders people, including British nationals. They pose an ongoing threat to our security and to the peace and stability of the Middle East… They show no respect for human rights, life and dignity and have oppressed people living in Gaza for too long.”
{Matzav.com}