UK police said Tuesday that specialist officers will assess whether to open a war crimes probe into Israel’s war with Hamas, following a referral from an advocacy group for Palestinians.
London’s Metropolitan Police said its small war crimes team, which is hosted within its counter-terrorism command, would determine if any further action or formal investigation will be launched.
The Met, the UK’s biggest and best-resourced police force, confirmed it had received a “referral” last Friday “relating to allegations linked to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.”
“The information within the referral will now be assessed by specialist officers as part of a scoping exercise to determine whether any further action or formal investigation will be carried out,” a police spokesman said.
“At this time, there is no UK-based investigation into this matter, or any other matters relating to this particular conflict.”
The spokesman noted the assessment would be done using guidelines for probing possible war crimes crafted with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which makes the final decisions on prosecuting cases in England and Wales.
However, the CPS must seek permission from the attorney general — a senior government minister and the state’s chief legal advisor — over war crimes prosecutions.
Met Commander Dominic Murphy, who leads its counter-terrorism command, insisted the force would adhere to the “very clear set of guidelines which we use when assessing all war crimes referrals made to us.”
The war erupted on October 7 when Palestinian terror group Hamas carried out a devastating attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Multiple women were raped and then murdered. Some massacre victims, including children, were tortured or mutilated. At an outdoor music festival, 360 people were killed. Before the Israel Defense Forces could respond, terrorists abducted at least 240 other people of all ages who were taken as hostages in Gaza.
Vowing to destroy the terror group, Israel launched a widescale military campaign in Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry has said killed over 24,000 people since. The figure cannot be independently verified and is believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 9,000 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
The UK-based International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) — an independent organization of lawyers, academics and politicians advocating for Palestinian rights — said it had filed a “war crimes complaint” with the Met.
The group said its investigators had handed the Met a 70-page “evidence dossier,” which detailed a range of alleged crimes by Israel in recent months.
Announcing the move, ICJP director Tayab Ali said they include attacks against properties, monuments, hospitals, and blocking humanitarian aid and basic necessities “to willfully cause great suffering or serious injury to body or health.”
The dossier also accuses Israel of “intentionally using starvation of civilians and deprivation of objects indispensable to survival as a method of warfare.”
It alleges complicity in that by “high-ranking Israeli officials and military personnel” as well as “nine named British citizens” serving in the Israeli military.
The file also includes “four British government ministers and officials alleged to have abetted these crimes.”
Israel says it strives to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using the Gaza population as human shields by embedding its military in civilian areas, a claim backed by the US and the European Union.
The latest development comes as the International Criminal Court, the world’s only independent court set up to probe the gravest offenses including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, continues its probe into the long-running conflict.
It opened an investigation in 2021 into Israel as well as Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups for possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories.
Meanwhile, South Africa last week launched an emergency case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza during the recent war. Israel rejected the claim as “baseless.”