London police are investigating a man who allegedly claimed that dozens of people killed in a fire that destroyed the capital’s Grenfell Tower last month were “killed by Zionists,” it was reported on Sunday.
“We received an allegation of anti-Semitic comments and it is being investigated by detectives from Westminster CID. The inquiry continues,” a spokesperson for London Metropolitan Police told the Telegraph newspaper.
The man, named in media outlets as Nazim Ali, a senior figure in Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), is accused of giving a speech on June 18 during London’s Al-Qud’s Day, in which he blamed the June 14 Grenfell Tower fire, in which at least 80 people died, on shady deals between the government and Zionists.
“As we know in Grenfell, many innocents were murdered by Theresa May’s cronies, many of which are supporters of Zionist ideology,” he was heard saying on video.
“Let us not forget that some of the biggest corporations who were supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell, in those towers in Grenfell, the Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”
Al Quds Day: “Zionist” corporations were responsible for #Grenfell pic.twitter.com/9ZuqZ8YnDb
— Zionist Federation (@ZionistFed) June 18, 2017
Later, he shouted, “It is the Zionists who give money to the Tory party, to kill people in high rise blocks…. Careful, careful, careful of those rabbis who belong to the Board of Deputies, who have got blood on their hands,” the Telegraph reported.
Ali responded to the allegations, telling the Telegraph that, “You have not presented what I said accurately in the wider context of what was said in the prelude to the minute’s silence for Grenfell. As presented it sounds somewhat inelegant… To say that some of Theresa May or the Tory party’s supporters are Zionists is hardly controversial.”
A spokesperson for the Community Security Trust described Ali’s hate speech as “grotesque.”
“In any circumstance, these comments would have been utterly hateful, but to hang them on what happened at Grenfell Tower beggared belief,”he said. “It was, of course, a pro-Hezbollah demonstration, but such hatred would have been staggering even in Beirut or Tehran, never mind the streets of London.”
Hundreds marched at the rally through the center of London behind the Palestinian flag and behind a flag of Hezbollah, which has been named in Britain as an illegal terror organization. Many marchers also carried paper versions of the Hezbollah flag. No effort was made by London police to stop them.
Other chants included: “Zionists/ISIS [Islamic State group] are the same. Only difference is the name.”
Al-Quds is the Muslim name for Jerusalem. The annual march is a call for the destruction of Israel.
