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2025-05-25 Britain
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UK police charged Jewish man with racial harassment for holding anti-Hezbollah sign
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[IsraelTimes] Law enforcement dropped charges, but only after after 8-month ordeal; interrogator asked suspect if he thought placard would offend pro-Hezbollah protesters
British police arrested and charged a Jewish man in London in September with racial harassment for holding a poster satirizing Hezbollah — with officers at one stage expressing concern that supporters of the terror group would be offended — only dropping the charges earlier this month, the Telegraph reported Friday.
The placard mocked His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
by showing the Hezbollah leader with a pager and the words "beep, beep, beep," a reference to the Israeli operation in September that saw pagers and walkie-talkies explode and kill 42 people.
The man, who was a counter-protester on September 20 at an anti-Israel demonstration near the home of Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in Swiss Cottage, north-west London, held the placard for less than three minutes; he chose to remain anonymous out of fear for his safety.
On September 27, an Israeli Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
killed Nasrallah in Beirut. That same day, the man returned to Swiss Cottage for another counter-protest and was arrested.
Before being kept overnight at a local cop shoppe, police searched his home for the poster, which they could not find, despite the man telling them it was not his.
"Two police vans and six officers turned up at our house to search for ’offensive material’, which was quite invasive. It was a horrible experience," he told the Telegraph.
"They put me in the lounge and asked my partner to go with them around the house. They weren’t very pleasant to her and even went through her knicker drawer. It was totally ridiculous."
Video from the man’s interrogation obtained by the Telegraph shows a policewoman repeatedly asking him about the poster: "Do you think that showing this image to persons protesting who are clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel that by doing so would stir up racial hatred further than it is already?"
The man’s attorney, Carl Wolf, replied: "Are you saying that there were pro-Hezbollah people there? Because it is a proscribed terrorist organization." The officer said she was "aware of that" and continued her line of questioning.
Despite denying that he intended to incite racial hatred or insult supporters of Hezbollah, which is recognized as a terrorist organization in the UK, police charged him for "causing racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress by words or writing," the Telegraph reported.
The charges were dropped on May 10 after the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.
"The Met Police are still completely out of their depth when it comes to policing the anti-Israel hate marches we’ve seen on our streets week in, week out since the October 7 attacks," the man told the Telegraph.
"It beggars belief that police could think that this placard may be offensive to supporters of Hezbollah. If there are Hezbollah supporters at these marches, then why weren’t charges brought against them for terrorist offenses, rather than me being charged for holding a sign that can only be construed as political satire?
"I didn’t realize how relieved I was until I heard I wasn’t going to court."
London police told the Telegraph that the officer "clearly misspoke when she described those in the protest as pro-Hezbollah instead of pro-Paleostinian," adding that the man "was charged following a careful consideration of the evidence."
John Woodcock, the UK’s former extremism tsar, told The Telegraph: "We all understand the police have a difficult job preventing protests escalating into disorder, but the idea that officers intervened on the side of supporters of a proscribed terrorist organization is grotesque."
He added that "it’s an implausible explanation from the police that this officer simply misspoke. She was reading from a list of pre-prepared questions. They should just own their mistake and use this opportunity to ensure lessons are learnt."
Chris Philip, the UK shadow home secretary, told the Telegraph: "In recent times, the police have failed to act when confronted with protesters calling for jihad and intifada in London. Yet this man was apparently arrested because he might have offended supporters of a banned terrorist organization.
"This is two-tier policing in action. The law is rightly clear that supporting banned terrorist groups, inciting violence, inciting racial hatred or harassing people is illegal. Beyond that, free speech applies to everyone. The police sometimes turn a blind eye when applying the law might be difficult, yet over-police at other times. The law should be applied equally to all, robustly and without fear or favor. That is not what happened here."
Ian Austin, a man who was investigated by UK police for calling the terror group Hamas
 ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
"Islamists" on social media, told the Telegraph: "It beggars belief that someone would be arrested, put in the cells and then charged for holding this sign because it might upset supporters of Islamist holy warriors and a proscribed organization, rather than take action against the terror supporters.
"There is clearly a systemic problem when it comes to dealing with the hate marches and, instead of telling us they disagree with individual decisions, ministers need to get a grip and sort it out."
A front man for the police told the Telegraph that 28 arrests have been made since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught under the UK Terrorism Act "for offenses at protests, including wearing clothing or displaying symbols that indicated support for such groups, including Hezbollah. This is in addition to the hundreds of arrests made for other offenses." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2025-05-25 2025-05-25 01:00||
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