British police have charged a member of acclaimed Irish hip-hop group Kneecap with a terrorism offense for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a Kentish Town Forum concert in London on 21 November 2024.
The Metropolitan Police force said Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, 27, was charged under the Terrorism Act with displaying a flag in support a proscribed organization.
The force said the musician - whose stage name is Mo Chara, and whom police referred to by the English spelling of his name, Liam O’Hanna - is due in court on 18 June.
Earlier this month, police said Kneecap was being investigated by counterterror detectives after videos emerged allegedly showing the band shouting “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” and calling on people to kill Tory MPs.
After the police investigation was announced, Kneecap said it had “never supported Hamas or Hezbollah,” and accused “establishment figures” of taking comments out of context to “manufacture moral hysteria.”
They doubled down on this stance today, as the band responded to Mo Chara's terror offence charge, calling it a "carnival of distraction."
Pointing out the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Kneecap said of the British establishment: “They profit from genocide, they use an ‘anti-terror law’ against us for displaying a flag thrown on stage. A charge not serious enough to even warrant their ‘crown court’, instead a court that doesn’t have a jury.”
“What’s the objective?”, the group continued. “To restrict our ability to travel. To prevent us speaking to young people across the world. To silence voices of compassion. To prosecute artists who dare speak out. Instead of defending innocent people, or the principles of international law they claim to uphold, the powerful in Britain have abetted slaughter and famine in Gaza, just as they did in Ireland for centuries. Then, like now, they claim justification.”
The trio went on to say that “the IDF units they arm and fly spy plane missions for are the real terrorists, the whole world can see it”, and concluded: “We stand proudly with the people. You stand complicit with the war criminals. We are on the right side of history. You are not. We will fight you in your court. We will win. Free Palestine.”
The Belfast trio has been praised for invigorating the Irish-language cultural scene in Northern Ireland through their music and their award-winning biographical film Kneecap – which was one of our favourite movies of 2024.
Check out our interview with Kneecap director Rich Peppiatt, who spoke to Euronews Culture about how the status of the Irish language remains a contested political issue in a society still split between British unionist and Irish nationalist communities.
"We live in a world where increasingly the hegemony of English is making people more monolingual," Peppiatt told Euronews Culture. "And that doesn't enrich us as a humanity because once a language is gone, it's gone forever. There's no way of getting it back. It's almost like destroying the environment. You can't suddenly go, ‘Oh, can we just rewind this?’ Once the language is gone, there's no one left to pass it on. It's done. And we lose then a sense of who we are, our history and our culture. I think where the band Kneecap are really important in that conversation is that there is no economic value to speaking Irish." Read on here.
Police said they are still investigating footage from another Kneecap concert in November 2023.
Indeed, another source of controversy is footage from a gig where one band member allegedly says: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”
This provoked condemnation from the daughter of the late Conservative MP David Amess, who was murdered in 2021.
Kneecap denied promoting violence against MPs and apologised to the family of Amess. They called the controversy “a coordinated smear campaign” against their efforts in “exposing the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Many have shared their support for Kneecap and the “freedom of expression” – including musicians Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Tom Morello, Pulp and Fontaines D.C., who all signed an open letter to protect freedom of expression.
Several Kneecap gigs have been cancelled as a result of the controversy, especially in Germany where Kneecap were scheduled to play in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. Some British lawmakers have called on organizers of next month's Glastonbury Festival to scrap a planned performance.
Kneecap were dropped from the Eden Project line-up but are still due to headline Wide Awake Festival in south London this Friday.
