The armed Palestinian group Hamas has instructed lawyers to appeal the British government’s refusal to remove the organisation from the UK’s terror list.
The announcement was made on Tuesday as Hamas instructed barristers Franck Magennis and Daniel Grutters to launch the appeal against UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s earlier decision to reject the group’s initial de-proscription request.
In a six-page legal filing, lawyers argued that Home Secretary “acted with an improper motive,” when she rejected Hamas’ appeal on April 9, saying she failed to give it proper review or engage its legal arguments because of “her support for, and belief in, Zionism and the Apartheid State of Israel, and/or her related and racist hostility towards non-Jewish Palestinians.”
In a post on X, Magennis said: “I’m instructed by Hamas to appeal the Home Secretary’s decision to maintain the ban of the Movement. Our grounds allege that Yvette Cooper fettered her discretion pursuant to a longstanding, inflexible policy of support for Zionism, a fascist ideology.”
In its April 9 filing, they argued that the British government should remove its designation as a terror group and recognise its “legitimate role as a Palestinian resistance movement engaged in a struggle for self-determination and liberation.”
The application also argues that proscription unlawfully infringes on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, as protected by Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, including open debate and political expression.
Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, had already been proscribed in the UK more than two decades earlier, but in 2021, the then Home Secretary Priti Patel extended the ban to the entire organisation, arguing that no distinction remained between its political and military wings.
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Commenting on her decision, Patel said: “Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry as well as terrorist training facilities, and it has long been involved in significant terrorist violence.
“Hamas commits, participates, prepares for and promotes and encourages terrorism. If we tolerate extremism, it will erode the rock of security.”
On July 8, 2025, the Yvette Cooper officially rejected Hamas’s initial challenge to the terrorist designation.
The Home Office claimed: “The proscription of Hamas supports law enforcement in tackling harmful activity in the UK; it underlines the UK’s endorsement of non-violence in Palestine and the region; and it reinforces the UK’s commitment to combatting terrorism overseas. Maintaining Hamas’ proscription is necessary and proportionate to protect UK national security and support the global fight against terrorism.”
Hamas’s lawyers rejected that characterisation and said that the group “does not pose any threat to the UK’s national security. In fact, it has never conducted any operations outside of historic Palestine, let alone in any of the territory of the UK.”
They said the Home Office’s claims that the UK supports non-violence in Palestine and the region “are perverse, which renders the decision itself perverse.” Additionally claiming the UK has “persistently and consistently used, and defended, the use of violence in Palestine and the region.”
