> “But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
If that is a crime, send me back to jail.”
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...
A recent letter from the Home Secretary to the Police states the following:
> As you know, Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK in its entirety. It is therefore a criminal offence for a person in the UK to:
> …
> * invite support for Hamas
> * express support for Hamas whilst being reckless as to whether the expression will encourage support of it
> …
Assuming this is an accurate representation of the law, it seems we don’t need to invoke conspiracy and persecution theories to understand why the police want to speak to him.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-chiefs-ask...
“I still don’t actually know whether the terrorism investigation into me is focused on Palestine or on Wikileaks. It seems to be both and anything else they can get.”
https://apnews.com/article/uk-police-should-not-have-stopped...
> Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said officers should not have used Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which gives them exceptional powers to root out terrorists, to determine if Moret had been involved in the turbulent pension reform demonstrations that had roiled France for months.
> “The problem with exercising counterterrorism powers to investigate whether an individual is a peaceful protestor or a violent protestor is that it is using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut,” Hall said.
Using the same powers (admittedly less harshly) regarding a post on twitter.com is similarly "using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut" -- there isn't even the question of violence in this case.
When the speech is promoting and supporting a terrorist organization (according to UK law), the police have a reasonable expectation to investigate and see if that individual is providing other material support to the organization.
It is literally peak FAFO.
Politically, I personally prefer something more like the US first amendment, however that is not a popular political opinion in the UK where hate speech restrictions enjoy broad political support.
> outright support of listed
> terrorism organizations is
> not a grey area.
In the case of a government organization like Hamas that's pretty absurd.
I don't agree with most of what they're doing, but I'd think that e.g. expressing support for their efforts to provide clean drinking water to their constituents wouldn't be illegal, but the text of the law seems to clearly state that it would be.
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...