Hamas launches legal challenge against UK terror designation

The Palestinian group Hamas has instructed British lawyers to appeal the UK's 2021 decision to designate the movement as a terrorist organisation, Middle East Eye can reveal. 

Legal papers seen by MEE show that Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas' foreign relations office, instructed lawyers to appeal a controversial decision by former UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to proscribe the group in its entirety. 

Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, was proscribed by the UK more than two decades ago, but Patel decided to extend the ban to the whole organisation, arguing there was no longer a distinction between the political and military wings of the group.

Fahad Ansari, the director of Riverway Law, which is leading the challenge; Daniel Grutters, a barrister at One Pump Court Chambers and Franck Magennis, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, submitted a 106-page application to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on Wednesday which claimed the 2021 decision "pursued explicitly political objectives by a politically compromised Secretary of State".

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. 

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