Hamas Asks British Government to Remove it from Terror List

Thursday, 10 April 2025 | Hamas has formally petitioned the British government to be removed from its list of designated terrorist organizations, the Guardian reported Wednesday. In its official submission, the group described itself as a "“a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project." The UK Home Office has not commented on the request.

Senior Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk added a witness statement to the petition, calling the UK’s designation “unjust” and accusing Britain of longstanding complicity. “The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century," he wrote. "Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people.”

In its legal argument, Hamas’s legal team acknowledged that its actions meet the broad definition of terrorism under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. However, it asserted that the same definition also applies to “any organization worldwide that uses violence to achieve political aims—including Israeli forces, the Ukrainian military and even the British Army.”

The UK designated Hamas’s military wing as a terrorist organization in 2001, and expanded that designation to include the political bureau in 2021. At the time, the British government called the distinction between the two "artificial," stating that Hamas is “a complex but single terrorist organization.”

The request comes amid renewed scrutiny of Hamas in the UK. A month and a half ago, following the release of a controversial BBC documentary featuring the son of a senior Hamas figure, Conservative Parliament member Kemi Badenoch called for an inquiry into whether the broadcaster had paid Hamas during the film's production. In a letter to BBC Director-General Tim Davie, Badenoch demanded clarity on whether British taxpayers' money—via the publicly funded license fee—had reached the terrorist group.

Earlier, in August 2024, the Telegraph revealed that Hamas had drawn up plans to “seize” the remains of British soldiers buried in Gaza as leverage to blackmail the UK government. The report was based on a document recovered by the IDF in Gaza, written by a Hamas operative in October 2022, following remarks by then-Prime Minister Liz Truss, who had considered relocating the UK embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.