Scotland Yard: Five UK Labour members face criminal charges for anti-Semitism

“There are posts suggesting Jews should be exterminated. There’s talk about gas chambers,” said a former director of public prosecutions.

By World Israel News Staff

Already reeling from its defeat in the recent UK parliamentary election, the Labour Party “faces humiliation over anti-Semitism after it emerged prosecutors are considering bringing criminal charges against five party supporters,” reports the Mail Online.

The party had already been swamped with accusations of anti-Semitism under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Scotland Yard Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick revealed on Wednesday, reports the British news outlet, that “six people have been arrested or interviewed under caution following an inquiry into social media messages denying the Holocaust and abusing Jewish people.”

It comes about 16 months after police were given “a dossier of alleged cases” by LBC Radio, a London-based national phone-in and talk radio station, says Mirror Online.

The documents are said to have given details of 45 cases, including one alleged statement that “we shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all,” it adds.

The dossier was said to have been the result of an internal Labour inquiry into anti-Semitism in the party “detailing anti-Semitic messages on social media allegedly posted by Labour Party members,” reports the Evening Standard.

One post reportedly included a warning that a “Zionist extremist MP who hates civilized people” would “get a good kicking.”

Lord Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions, told LBC on Wednesday that “there are posts suggesting Jews should be exterminated. There’s talk about gas chambers.”

The accusations include “publishing or distributing material likely to stir up racial hatred contrary to the Public Order Act 1986,” according to media reports.

Labour is also being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into other allegations of anti-Semitism, British media have reported.

Euan Philipps, a spokesman for Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said in a statement that the latest cases disclosed underline “the degree of criminality that anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party has reached.”

The group says it has reported “hundreds of similar cases of anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party which we believe also constitute hate crimes. They, too, must now lead to prosecutions.”

For its part, the Labour Party reacted through a spokesman who said that “anti-Semitism has no place in our society and we are committed to challenging and campaigning against it in all its forms,” reports the Mail Online.