Hamas Legal Challenge of UK Terror Designation: Court Appeal Begins

Hamas’ legal chal­lenge to its 2021 UK ter­ror des­ig­na­tion is the focus of a new legal effort by the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group. On 9 April 2025, The Guardian report­ed that Hamas had ini­ti­at­ed a legal chal­lenge against the deci­sion, argu­ing that the pro­scrip­tion vio­lat­ed the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights and imped­ed its polit­i­cal role in resolv­ing the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. The arti­cle begins:

Hamas has filed a legal peti­tion to be removed from the UK’s list of pro­scribed ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. The group, respon­si­ble for the dead­ly Octo­ber 7, 2023 attacks in south­ern Israel that killed over 1,200 civil­ians and took 250 hostages, argues it is not a ter­ror­ist enti­ty but a Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic lib­er­a­tion and resis­tance move­ment. Mousa Abu Mar­zouk, head of Hamas’s inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, claims the British deci­sion reflects long­stand­ing sup­port for Zion­ism and occu­pa­tion in Pales­tine, and insists Hamas has nev­er threat­ened the UK. Both Hamas’s mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal wings are banned in the UK, which con­sid­ers them a sin­gle ter­ror­ist body. The legal team rep­re­sent­ing Hamas pro bono argues the UK’s def­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror­ism under the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 could equal­ly apply to state mil­i­taries, includ­ing the British and Israeli forces. They con­tend that pro­scrip­tion lim­its free speech and is incom­pat­i­ble with the UK’s inter­na­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties to pre­vent geno­cide and sup­port human rights. Mean­while, UK offi­cials and oppo­si­tion fig­ures, includ­ing Pri­ti Patel, main­tain that Hamas is a dan­ger­ous, Iran­ian-backed ter­ror­ist group pos­ing ongo­ing threats to region­al and glob­al security.​

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/09/hamas-calls-on-the-uk-government-to-remove-it-from-list-of-banned-terrorist-groups

Key Points

• Hamas is legal­ly con­test­ing the UK government’s 2021 deci­sion to clas­si­fy both its polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary branch­es as ter­ror­ist enti­ties, argu­ing this under­mines its legit­i­ma­cy as a resis­tance movement.
• The group’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives claim the UK’s pro­scrip­tion vio­lates inter­na­tion­al human rights stan­dards, specif­i­cal­ly the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights, by restrict­ing polit­i­cal expres­sion and free­dom of association.
• UK author­i­ties and polit­i­cal fig­ures con­tin­ue to defend the ban, cit­ing Hamas’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for the Octo­ber 2023 attacks in Israel and its ties to Iran as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for main­tain­ing the ter­ror designation.
• If the ini­tial legal chal­lenge is reject­ed by the British gov­ern­ment, Hamas’ lawyers are pre­pared to esca­late the case to the Pro­scribed Organ­i­sa­tions Appeal Com­mis­sion for a for­mal review.

Hamas UK Terrorism Designation: Influence, Community Response, and Shifting Narratives

The Unit­ed Kingdom’s des­ig­na­tion of Hamas as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion has rever­ber­at­ed through­out British Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and advo­ca­cy groups, prompt­ing com­plex respons­es and strate­gic adap­ta­tions. Fol­low­ing the des­ig­na­tion, key UK-based Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions, some with ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, have pub­licly dis­tanced them­selves from direct sup­port of Hamas, instead focus­ing their rhetoric on broad­er pro-Pales­tin­ian activism and crit­i­cism of Israeli poli­cies, as demon­strat­ed when a coali­tion of UK Mus­lim groups reject­ed an inter­faith pact over per­ceived pro-Israel bias. Stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions have also become flash­points for con­tro­ver­sy, with the Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties (FOSIS) threat­en­ing to with­draw from nation­al bod­ies over alle­ga­tions of anti-Semi­tism, reflect­ing height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ties and polar­iza­tion with­in cam­pus pol­i­tics. Mean­while, Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed groups have sought to reframe inter­na­tion­al dis­course by shift­ing atten­tion from con­flicts like Ukraine to the plight of Pales­tini­ans, while care­ful­ly avoid­ing explic­it men­tion of Hamas in their con­dem­na­tions of Israeli actions. These pat­terns indi­cate a tac­ti­cal recal­i­bra­tion among UK-based Islamist and advo­ca­cy net­works, who now empha­size sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pales­tine and a cri­tique of Israel while nav­i­gat­ing legal risks and pub­lic scruti­ny asso­ci­at­ed with the Hamas designation.

Hamas’ legal push reflects efforts to reframe its image from mil­i­tant group to legit­i­mate resis­tance move­ment, lever­ag­ing inter­na­tion­al law to con­test sanc­tions. The UK’s des­ig­na­tion of Hamas as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion has sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ed its finan­cial net­works and inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tions, though chal­lenges remain in ful­ly curb­ing its activ­i­ties. Fol­low­ing the 2021 expan­sion of the Hamas pro­scrip­tion, the UK has imposed asset freezes and trav­el bans. Sanc­tions have tar­get­ed Hamas financiers in Lebanon and Alge­ria, prompt­ing Hamas to rely on small­er, less trace­able trans­ac­tions and cryp­tocur­ren­cies, as seen in coor­di­nat­ed US-UK sanc­tions against Gaza Now and its founder, Mustafa Ayash.

Exter­nal references:

• U.S., UK, and Aus­tralia Tar­get Addi­tion­al Hamas Finan­cial Net­works and Facil­i­ta­tors of Vir­tu­al Cur­ren­cy Transfers
• UK For­eign, Com­mon­wealth and Devel­op­ment Offices update of the UK sanc­tions list
• US, UK slap sanc­tions on indi­vid­u­als, com­pa­nies who fundraised for Hamas

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.