Nigel Farage criticises Met’s policing of the Palestine protests
Nigel Farage has blasted the Met Police for their response to a pro-Palestinian protestor shouting “Jihad” on the streets of London at the weekend.
The GB News presenter slammed the police for their claim there was no “chaos” during the protest, and flagged video footage showing them helping down a protestor who had climbed scaffolding in Westminster, only to hand him back his Palestinian flag after reaching street level.
Mr Farage sarcastically commented: “Well done the boys in blue, absolutely marvellous.”
He informed viewers the scenes had been “worse than the Palestinian flag, because we actually see protestors with a black flag”.
“Now this black flag, I think to many, would be seen to be a jihadi flag. A flag that we’ve associated in the past with Al Qaeda and ISIS.
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“The police don’t seem to think so, they seem to think this is some sort of religious symbol”.
Mr Farage reminded the Met that “while they wave this flag and make hateful chants about the Jews, here’s our old friend Osama Bin Laden sitting in front of that exact flag”.
The former Brexit Party leader also highlighted a shocking clip of a protestor yelling Jihad during the protest.
The Met responded to the clip, saying: “The word jihad has a number of meanings but we know the public will most commonly associate it with terrorism.
“We have specialist counter-terrorism officers… they have assessed this video… and have not identified any offences arising from the specific clip.”
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Mr Farage said the police response was not satisfactory.
He also flagged that the video was filmed at a protest organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, “a group that is banned in most other European countries”.
The star presenter asked whether the police have “just turned a blind eye” and suggested radical Islam now has “free reign on the streets of London because we’re just too scared of them and there are just too many of them”.
However he conceded the police were in a “devil of a position” and the policing of certain protest chants can be difficult to judge.
He concluded: “My own view is people shouting ‘Jihad’ and carrying around ISIS flags, and shouting all sorts of things about the Jews, I would have thought those things step way beyond the mark and that just arresting 10 people on the streets of London this Saturday frankly was a joke”.
Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former National Security Adviser to the PM, defended the Met’s chief Sir Mark Rowley, but said he believes Hizb ut-Tahrir should be a proscribed group.
Earlier today, Met Police chief Mark Rowley responded to the criticism saying that officers have to follow the ‘lines of the law’ but could not police ‘taste and decency’, following the row over the chant.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Sir Mark said police could only enforce the law and not “taste and decency”.
He said: “We are absolutely ruthless in tackling anybody who puts their foot over the legal line. We’re accountable for the law. We can’t enforce taste or decency, but we can enforce the law.
“The conversation finished really around the line of the law. It’s our job to enforce to that line. It’s Parliament’s job to draw that line. And the thought that maybe events at the moment, maybe some of the lines aren’t quite in the right place.”
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