Documents submitted by Riverway claim that the group’s proscription is “disproportionate” and call on the UK to reverse “its morally and legally indefensible policy of siding with the Zionist oppressor against the oppressed people of Palestine”.
The Islamist group was banned in its entirety in 2021, having been partially proscribed in 2001. Expressing support for or being a member of Hamas is illegal and punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
The 106-page application submitted by Riverway argues that Hamas “poses no threat to the UK people and have been explicit about this”. However, 18 British citizens were among the 1,200 people murdered during the October 7 attacks, placing it among the deadliest terrorist attacks involving British nationals abroad in decades.
Marzouk, a multi-billionaire and Hamas’s former political chief, is considered as the group’s second-in-command. He lives in Qatar and, in interviews with the BBC and The Economist following the massacre, refused to acknowledge the prospect that Hamas had deliberately killed civilians.
The firm is acting on behalf of senior Hamas Mousa figure Abu Marzouk (Image: Getty)Getty Images
The application also describes Hamas as “an organised resistance movement” and claims the group’s activities represent the “right of the Palestinian people to resist Zionism and the colonisation, occupation, apartheid and genocide carried out in its name”.
It adds: “The legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral [and] legitimate.”
The filing goes on to argue that the UK’s proscription of Hamas is “contrary to the duties of the British State to end genocide” and claims the ban restricts freedom of speech and assembly. It asserts that proscription “undermines the democratic process by seeking to eliminate from the political process the party which has won the only free and fair election in the occupied Palestinian territories”.
The last parliamentary elections in Gaza were held in 2006 and the majority of Gazans living today have never cast a vote for the group.
The document further claims that banning Hamas “elides the multi-faceted nature of the movement and the important social and political roles it plays,” and describes the organisation as “a natural and logical” response to Zionism.
“If Hamas did not exist, Palestinians would invent it,” it states.
The legal submission also asserts that proscription “impedes humanitarian relief efforts” and results in the “mass criminalisation of Palestinians,” while claiming it has “provided Israel with near carte blanche”.
The application repeatedly attacks Zionism, describing it as “a settler colonial project,” and accuses the British government of complicity in Palestinian suffering. It references the Balfour Declaration, the 1948 “Nakba”, and alleges “present complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
The case is led by Fahad Ansari, who describes himself as a “lawyer, writer, activist,” and is supported by barristers Daniel Grutters and Franck Magennis.
Magennis previously used a photo of Hamas gunmen storming into southern Israel on October 7 as his X banner. On the day of the massacre, he wrote: “For almost two decades ‘Israel’ has trapped more than two million people in an open air prison for the ‘crime’ of being insufficiently Jewish. We owe Palestinians our solidarity in their struggle against this naked racial domination. Victory to the intifada.”
Posting about the application to the Home Office on Wednesday, Riverway Law said on X: “Nothing in these posts invites any individual to support, or express support for any proscribed organisation listed by the British Home Secretary under the Terrorism Act 2000. These posts are only to provide a summary of the legal application to summarise its significance.”
