A Jewish protester was arrested by London’s Metropolitan police for a placard he held mocking the eliminated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the Telegraph revealed on Friday.
The anonymous man was detained and charged last September for the cartoon, which featured Nasrallah and the words “beep, beep, beep” - a reference to Israel’s majorly successful pager operation.
The pagers killed dozens of Hezbollah agents and wounded thousands of terrorists. While Nasrallah survived the small explosions, he was killed a week later in an airstrike.
The terror group entered a war with Israel after it began launching attacks on the Jewish state a day after its Palestinian ally, Hamas, invaded southern Israel on October 7 and murdered some 1,200 people.
Police were reported to have repeatedly questioned the man if he thought the placard would offend “clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel” activists.
Hezbollah is a recognized terrorist organization in the United Kingdom; thus, supporting the group publicly is a criminal offense.
Offending 'pro-Hezbollah' activists in London
In recordings of the police interrogation seen by the Telegraph, officers asked the man: “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?”
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said it was an example of “two-tier policing in action”.
“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 organisation," Philip told the Telegraph.
“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 favour. That is not what happened here.”
Carl Woolf, specialist criminal solicitor advocate at Woolf Law LLP representing the Jewish man, countered to the officers: “Are you saying that there were pro-Hezbollah people there? Because it is a proscribed terrorist organisation.”
“I am aware of that,” the officer reportedly affirmed while continuing the line of questioning.
Despite the placard not belonging to the Jewish protester, and him only holding it for three minutes, officers raided the man’s house in search of the cardboard sign, according to the Telegraph.
“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 said. “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.”
The Jewish man was charged under the Public Order Act for causing racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm, or distress by words or writing. The Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case earlier this month, citing a lack of evidence.
“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 protester told the British newspaper.
“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 offences, rather than me being charged for holding a sign that can only be construed as political satire?
“I didn’t realise how relieved I was until I heard I wasn’t going to court.”