The Palestinian group Hamas on Aug. 19 filed an appeal to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) to challenge the British government’s refusal to remove the group from the UK’s list of banned terrorist organisations.
As per the Middle East Eye, Hamas has asked barristers Franck Magennis and Daniel Grutters to launch the appeal against UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to reject the group’s request to take it off the list of banned terrorist organisations.
Magennis is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers and Grutters is a barrister at One Pump Court Chambers. Fahad Ansari, director of Riverway Law, which has since rebranded as Riverway to the Sea, is also supporting the barristers in the challenge.
The lawyers involved in the case stressed that Hamas did not pay them or the experts and lawyers who provided evidence for its submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.
Earlier this year, Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of Hamas’ foreign relations office, instructed Magennis and Grutters to appeal a controversial decision by former UK home secretary Priti Patel to proscribe the group in its entirety in 2021.
Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, had already been proscribed in the UK more than two decades earlier, but Patel extended the ban to the entire organisation, arguing that no distinction remained between its political and military wings.
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