Metropolitan Police officers have been filmed refusing to call Hezbollah a terrorist organisation and saying that the description is a matter of “opinion”.

The interaction was recorded by a member of the public at a protest in central London on Sept 28 that was advertised as a “vigil for Lebanon”.

Footage shows two officers urging a concerned onlooker to “walk away” and stop being a “distraction” to the vigil for Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who was killed in an Israeli air strike on Sept 27.

Asked what the vigil was for, an officer marshalling the event incorrectly stated that it was for “the death of the leader of Lebanon”. He then admitted to not taking “a lot of interest in politics” because he “isn’t allowed to”.

Parts of Hezbollah have been proscribed since 2001, with the military wing banned in 2008 before the entire organisation was in 2019 because it “supports terrorism in Iraq and the Palestinian territories”. 

A Met Police spokesman has admitted that the video shows the need to brief officers on the proscribed status of “Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups”. 

The force said the officers had been situated in the area to “identify any offences, including support for proscribed organisations”.