Hamas files second appeal to overturn UK terror designation

The Palestinian group argues that proscription criminalises ordinary Palestinians living in Gaza

Palestinian Hamas fighters gather at the site of the handing over of Israeli captives at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, 22 February 2025 (AFP)

Palestinian Hamas fighters gather at the site of the handing over of Israeli captives at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, 22 February 2025 (AFP)

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The Palestinian group Hamas on Tuesday filed an appeal to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) to challenge the British government's refusal to remove the group from the UK's list of banned terrorist organisations.

Hamas has instructed barristers Franck Magennis and Daniel Grutters to launch the appeal against UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's decision to reject the group's request to take it off the list of banned terrorist organisations.

Magennis is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers and Grutters is a barrister at One Pump Court Chambers.

Fahad Ansari, director of Riverway Law - which has since rebranded as Riverway to the Sea - is also supporting the barristers in the challenge.

The lawyers involved in the case stressed that Hamas did not pay them or the experts and lawyers who provided evidence for its submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.

The UK Home Office did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Earlier this year, Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of Hamas’ foreign relations office, instructed Magennis and Grutters to appeal a controversial decision by former UK home secretary Priti Patel to proscribe the group in its entirety in 2021.

'Biased and legally flawed'

Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, had already been proscribed in the UK more than two decades earlier, but Patel extended the ban to the entire organisation, arguing that no distinction remained between its political and military wings.

But in July, Cooper rejected the application to overturn Hamas’s designation as a terrorist organisation.

The appeal argues that his decision is "biased, legally flawed and politically motivated", noting that the home secretary had publicly labelled Hamas "barbaric".

"The decision to ban Hamas is part of the logic justifying Israel's ongoing genocide. For Yvette Cooper to have cited Britain's supposed opposition to violence in the region is an insult to everyone's intelligence, and to people in Gaza in particular," Magennis said in a statement.

"Palestinians are human, and they feel terror when Britain backs Israel's genocide. Yvette Cooper is complicit in the slaughter, and her latest decision to maintain the ban on Hamas shows it."

Israel's war on Gaza: Who are Palestine Action?

In its original application, Hamas argued that the proscription hinders the group's ability to broker a political solution to the conflict, stifles discussions aimed at securing a long-term settlement, and criminalises ordinary Palestinians living in Gaza.

Its submission included expert testimony from Oxford-based Israeli academic Avi Shlaim, who urged the UK to take a "more nuanced position on Hamas" by delisting it as a terror organisation.

When a proscribed group challenges its designation, the home secretary has 90 days to respond. Under Section 4 of the Terrorism Act, any organisation designated as a terrorist group may appeal to have its name removed from the government's list of banned organisations.

Individuals who have been impacted by a group's proscription can also apply to the home secretary to have it deproscribed.

The home secretary also has the discretion to add or remove any group engaged in armed conflict from the proscribed list.

The power to designate a group as a terrorist organisation has come under renewed fire after Cooper designated Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

The direct action group denied the claims made against it and successfully sought a judicial review to oppose the ban.

Israel's genocide in Gaza

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