Two British soldiers court-martialed for spreading horrific clips of Israeli civilians murdered on Oct. 7

Many reacted to the report by noting the threat that Zakariya Munir and Mohammed Salah may pose to the community.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Two British soldiers have been court-martialed for sharing online horrific clips of Israeli civilians murdered Oct. 7, 2023, and their bodies being debased by the Hamas perpetrators.

In the July 4 hearing, prosecutors at the Bulford Military Court said that starting the day after the Gazan terrorists’ invasion of Israel, Signaller Zakariya Munir, 22, sent to Signaller Mohammed Salah, 34, videos that “depicted real scenes of brutality during the October Hamas attacks.”

This included footage from a head-cam showing “faces and bodies of corpses being searched and kicked,” montages of “dead civilians lying in pools of blood,” and “a group of young men shoving and urinating on elderly men who had their heads bagged and hands tied,” said prosecutor Lt. Col. Felicity Bryson.

Salah then forwarded the videos, which Munir said he’d found on Telegram, to others, including other soldiers as well as civilians.

Distributing these clips, legally labeled “grossly offensive,” violated their military commitment to preserve “the set of values and standards which service personnel adhere to,” said Judge Advocate General Alan Large.

“They showed offenses where people had been killed and their bodies were being violated,” Large noted, with the final video that Munir sent but which Salah did not forward actually showing “people committing the offense of murder.”

According to the court transcript obtained by The Jerusalem Post, the judge said that had the pair pleaded guilty instead of innocent, there may have been some room for leniency, but it is “inconceivable to conclude that the distribution of material in this case is not serious enough to warrant dismissal.”

Munir, a four-year veteran of the 10th Signal Regiment, was convicted of four counts of sending offensive messages on a public network. Salah, who had been in the regiment since 2019, was charged with three similar counts.

Many online reactions to the story ranged from anger to fear.

Several people called Munir and Salah “the enemy within,” while noting their Arab-sounding names.

One, with the moniker “theohiocatbird,” wrote, “So, two men who’ve been trained to be proficient with deadly weapons have been kicked off the job. I’m sure they’re going to be perfectly well behaved. No worries, right?”

Some thought the men had gotten off too lightly and called for them to receive further punishment, suggesting either imprisonment or deportation.