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01/14 11:18 CST UK government urges police official to quit over ban of Maccabi
Tel Aviv soccer fans
UK government urges police official to quit over ban of Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer
fans
By PAN PYLAS
Associated Press
LONDON (AP) --- The U.K.'s home secretary on Wednesday urged the head of one of
the country's leading police forces to resign following a report on how fans
from Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv were banned from a match against
Premier League side Aston Villa in Birmingham last year.
Shabana Mahmood told lawmakers that the independent report found "a failure of
leadership" on the part of West Midlands Police Chief Constable Craig
Guildford, adding that he "no longer has my confidence."
The ban came at a time of heightened concerns about antisemitism in Britain
following a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue and calls from Palestinians
and their supporters for a sports boycott of Israel over the war with Hamas in
Gaza.
The decision to ban Maccabi fans from the match with Aston Villa on Nov. 6 was
widely criticized, including by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
West Midlands Police said at the time it had deemed the match to be high risk
"based on current intelligence and previous incidents," including violence and
hate crimes that took place when Maccabi played Ajax in Amsterdam last season.
Guildford did not immediately comment on the report Wednesday.
Mahmood said the report by the chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke,
found that West Midlands Police had overstated the threat posed by Maccabi fans
while understating the potential risks to them, and "conducted little
engagement with the Jewish community" before a decision was taken.
She said the report noted that "the force sought only the evidence to support
their desired position to ban the fans." The report did not find the police
force was antisemitic.
Mahmood also noted a police reference at the time to a nonexistent match
between Maccabi and Premier League side West Ham in 2023, which was deemed to
be an "AI hallucination." Guildford previously denied that AI was to blame for
that error but apologized for it Wednesday ahead of the report's publication.
Mahmood said she didn't have the power to fire Guildford herself as a result of
a policy change by the previous Conservative government in 2011, but she was
looking to reinstate that power to home secretaries. Currently, locally elected
police and crime commissioners have that power.
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