A member of Irish hip hop trio Kneecap has been charged with a terrorism offense following an investigation by London\u2019s Metropolitan Police. <\/p>\n
Liam O\u2019Hanna, 27, of Belfast has been charged with allegedly displaying a flag \u201cin support of Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation,\u201d London\u2019s Metropolitan Police said on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
The charge relates to a flag that was allegedly displayed by O\u2019Hanna \u2013 whose stage name is Mo Chara \u2013 on November 21, 2024, at the O2 Forum Kentish Town, a music venue in London, \u201cin such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation, namely Hezbollah,\u201d the police said in a statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers from the Met\u2019s Counter Terrorism Command were made aware on Tuesday, April 22, of an online video from the event. An investigation was carried out, which led to the Crown Prosecution Service authorizing the above charge,\u201d the statement said. <\/p>\n
The police added that O\u2019Hanna is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court on June 18. <\/p>\n
Kneecap have been vocal critics of Israel\u2019s war in Gaza. Earlier this month, UK counter-terrorism police said they were investigating the group after videos emerged allegedly showing the band calling for British politicians to be killed and shouting \u201cup Hamas, up Hezbollah.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kneecap has previously said it has never supported Hamas or Hezbollah and that the footage circulating online has been \u201cdeliberately taken out of all context\u201d as part of a \u201csmear campaign\u201d following their criticism of Israel and the United States in regards to the war in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Separately, video from November 2023 appeared to show one member of the group, who are from Northern Ireland, saying: \u201cThe only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.\u201d Tory is another word for Conservative, and MP is an abbreviation of Member of Parliament. In the past decade, two British MPs \u2013 Jo Cox and David Amess \u2013 have been murdered. <\/p>\n
Kneecap later apologized to the families of Cox and Amess. <\/p>\n
This was due to the time that elapsed between the events shown in the video and the video being brought to police attention, a spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
Both videos have been widely circulated online in wake of the band\u2019s Coachella set, where they led the crowd to chant \u201cFree Free Palestine,\u201d criticized Israel\u2019s campaign in Gaza, and also criticized US support for the war. <\/p>\n
Kneecap\u2019s manager, Daniel Lambert, recently told Irish broadcaster RT\u00c9 that the controversy \u201chas nothing to do with Kneecap\u2026 it\u2019s about telling the next young band\u2026 that you cannot speak about Palestine.\u201d <\/p>\n
This story has been updated with additional developments.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A member of Irish hip hop trio Kneecap has been charged with a terrorism offense…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}