Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh is due to appear in court after allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag during a gig last November
Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – who performs under the name Mo Chara – has been charged with a terror offence after allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a gig last November.
Ó hAnnaidh, 27, is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, June 18. The band has previously denied supporting Hamas or Hezbollah. In a statement published on Instagram this morning (May 22), they said “14,000 babies are about to die of starvation in Gaza, with food sent by the world sitting on the other side of a wall, and once again the British establishment is focused on us.”
“We deny the ‘offence’ and will vehemently defend ourselves. This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction. We are not the story. Genocide is,” the statement continued. “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.” Kneecap has vowed to fight the case in court and win. According to a post on the band’s WhatsApp channel, they will be releasing a new track this week addressing their recent experiences with counter-terrorism police.
Like Hamas, Hezbollah is a proscribed group in the UK, which means that it is a crime to “invite support”. Hezbollah is a Lebanese political party and military group which is primarily based in southern Lebanon. First formed after Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, it has been sporadically in conflict with Israel ever since, as well as being involved in other conflicts in the Middle East.
This arrest comes after a long list of controversies involving the Irish-language hip-hop act. After expressing support for Palestine onstage at Coachella in April, Kneecap faced what they described as a “coordinated smear campaign”. This included Sharon Osbourne calling for their US visas to be revoked, the launch of investigation by counter-terrorism police, and the band being condemned by both Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who suggested they should be jailed for incitement after footage emerged of one of them saying onstage, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”
Following this spate of controversies, a number of politicians and artists rallied behind Kneecap, including Massive Attack, Fontaines DC, Biig Piig, Primal Scream, Pulp, Jeremy Corbyn, and the French footballer Eric Cantona.
Israel has been accused of genocide by leading UN experts, genocide historians and human rights charities, including Amnesty International. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it “plausible” that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide. In July 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is unlawful, and that Israel has violated international prohibitions against racial segregation and apartheid. Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed at least 53,573 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, a figure which is likely to be a severe undercount.
According to the UN, over half a million people in Gaza currently face “a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death,” as a result of the deliberate blockade of humanitarian aid, while the entire 2.1 million population faces prolonged food shortages. The situation has got so bad that even Yair Golan, an Israeli opposition politician and former army general, has accused Israel of “kill[ing] babies as a pastime.” It remains legal to fly the flag of Israel, and Keir Starmer is yet to face any legal consequences for defending its war crimes.