West Midlands<\/a> police\u2019s chief constable Craig Guildford, and commanders involved in the decision making, greeting parts of the force\u2019s new testimony before them with outrage.<\/p>\nPolice said they had intelligence the Israeli fans would be the main perpetrators of trouble, a claim that is disputed.<\/p>\n
The cross-party committee of MPs, said parts of the intelligence gathering seemed \u201cone sided\u201d, inflating the threat Maccabi fans may have posed while underplaying to threat to them from those in Birmingham angered by Israel\u2019s attacks on Gaza.<\/p>\n
They said the minutes from SAG meetings showed pressure coming from two councillors, who said that away fans should not attend the game.<\/p>\n
As intelligence was being gathered ahead of the game, one document contained claims locals in Birmingham might \u201carm\u201d themselves.<\/p>\n
Mike O\u2019Hara, WMP\u2019s assistant chief constable, said: \u201cWe had people purporting to be Maccabi fans online who were goading local community members and saying \u2018this is what you\u2019re going to get\u2019. This was all forming part of the heat of the situation, so based on that, the commanders tried to make the right decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fixture was classified high risk by WMP, with the force pointing to alleged violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
However, Dutch police have disputed the accuracy of this information.<\/p>\n
Guildford denied he or the police force were politically motivated to find evidence to justify the ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom everything that I\u2019ve read, and the commanders that I spoke to, I do not believe that there was political influence on that decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cLots of local politicians and local members of the community I\u2019m sure wanted to try and influence it, but I honestly don\u2019t think it was influenced,\u201d he told the committee.<\/p>\n
Guildford defended claims by committee chair Karen Bradley that it felt like the force was \u201cscraping\u201d to find a reason to justify the ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really sorry if it comes across in that way. That was absolutely not the case,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Appearing before MPs, the Birmingham council leader John Cotton refused to comment on whether he had confidence in Guildford. He said: \u201cI do have concerns about the quality of the material provided to the SAG.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the second evidence hearing, Bradley concluded by telling Guildford her colleagues would be producing a report. Committee sources expect it will be critical.<\/p>\n
The home affairs committee\u2019s report is one of several into the incident, with some suggesting the ban was caving in to antisemitism.<\/p>\n
His Majesty\u2019s Inspectorate of Constabulary has been ordered by the home secretary to investigate the intelligence presented by WMP.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer denounced the ban, which came shortly after the terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue in which two worshippers died, as have opposition parties.<\/p>\n
Maccabi Tel Aviv declined their allocation of tickets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police chiefs facing scrutiny over a decision to ban fans of an Israeli football team from attending a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-355917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}