Sir Mark Rowley
Metropolitan Police Commissioner
New Scotland Yard
8-10 Broadway
London
SW1H 0AZ
28 March 2024
Dear Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley,
We are writing ahead of the annual al-Quds Day march on April 5 to register our concern with the way pro-Palestine demonstrations are being policed in the capital.
It has been evident since protests erupted last October that policing has increasingly become politicised in response to government figures condemning and demonising protestors.
Indeed, the number and type of arrests taking place attests to this surrender of operational independence. Protestors have been arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts such as carrying banners or sporting headbands carrying Arabic script.
Ibrahim Hlaiyil, 38, was charged with failing to comply with a requirement to remove a face covering, under Section 60aa of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act after being arrested at a protest on October 14, 2023.
On 28 Feb this year, the City of London Magistrate’s Court dismissed the case against him saying the police lacked a valid basis for his arrest. In dismissing the charge, the judge said: “There is no evidence to prove the essential element of the charge.” The judge stated that the arresting officer seemed to have taken the view that he was able to arrest anyone who refused to take off their face mask at the protest. The law actually only allows for arrest if a person is wearing a face covering for the purpose of concealing their identity, something that the police did not argue in court.
Then on March 9 this year Waseem Khan was arrested in London following a march for Palestine. Police dragged him off a bus, pulled him to the ground, handcuffed him and bundled him into a police van. Waseem had been carrying a shield in the demonstration which said “Resistance is justified when your land is occupied”. Police said it constituted hate speech and they had to arrest him so he wouldn’t cause anyone any more harassment, alarm or distress. He was later released without charge.
You will no doubt be aare that in the 40-plus years that the annual Al-Quds Day demonstration has taken place it has always been good natured and peaceful. Your own force has remarked on the peaceful, family-friendly nature of the event. For the safety of those who take part, we need to be assured that there will be no heavy-handedness or intimidation by police.
It has also come to our attention that sections of the pro-Israel media are once again inciting hatred against those who will turn out to demonstrate. They are presenting the demonstration as support for extremism and terrorism. We are sure you will agree that this kind of vilification is very unhelpful and can even lead to violent consequences, as was evident in June 2017 when Darren Osborne, who was radicalised by media misrepresentations of the Al-Quds Day event, planned to ram demonstrators with his truck. Having failed to break the police cordon he instead went to a north London mosque to drive his vehicle into a group of worshippers, killing an elderly man.
We would like to be assured that the police will be taking a common-sense and apolitical approach to the Al-Quds Day protests which would involve, inter alia, not bowing to media and political pressure to apply prejudicial interpretations to actions and statements that are part and parcel of peaceful public protests.
Yours sincerely,
Massoud Shadjareh,
Islamic Human Rights Commission
