British watchdog launches legal action against CPS over thwarted bid to prosecute anti-Semitic ‘Al-Quds Day’ march leader.
A British watchdog group has launched a judicial review proceedings against the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) after it was blocked from privately prosecuting the leader of last year’s “Al-Quds Day” march in London.
At the June 2017 Iran-backed, pro-Hezbollah event, Nazim Ali allegedly made a number of vehemently anti-Semitic statements over a loudspeaker.
The UK-based Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) subsequently pursued legal action against Ali, but this effort, according to the CAA, was thwarted by the CPS, which took over the case and then dropped it.
“This is a case that the CPS should have prosecuted itself,” CAA Chairman Gideon Falter stated on Monday. “Our empathic legal advice is that their decision to prevent us from doing so was irrational. We hope to succeed and resume the prosecution.”
Among other things, Ali was said to have blamed the deadly Grenfell apartment fire on ”the Zionists who give money to the Tory Party to kill people in high-rise blocks.”
He also, the CAA charged, told the crowd, “Careful of those rabbis who belong to the Board of Deputies, who have got blood on their hands, who agree with the killing of British soldiers. Do not allow them in your centers.”