Kneecap's headline festival performance to go ahead after terror offence charge
Kneecap will tonight headline a major festival at Brockwell Park just days after one of the members were charged by the Metropolitan Police with a terror offence
Kneecap are going ahead with headlining a festival, two days after a member was charged with a terror offence.
Liam O'Hanna, who uses the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged over the alleged display of a flag in support of Hezbollah at a gig at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north London, in November last year, the Metropolitan Police said on Wednesday. The group from Belfast, who rap in the Irish language, have a headline slot at Wide Awake Festival in Brockwell Park, south London, on Friday night.
It comes after they held a surprise gig at the 100 Club on Oxford Street on Thursday, where O'Hanna could be seen in videos on social media arriving on stage with tape covering his mouth.
He then joked about being careful what he said before saying he wanted to thank his lawyer. He said: "I need to thank my lawyer, he's here tonight as well." Police said they were at the central London venue on Thursday evening to manage visitors to the sold-out event.
The band said on X that the event sold out in 90 seconds, with 2,000 people on the waiting list. On Monday, a spokesperson for several planned music festivals due to take place in Brockwell Park in Lambeth said none will be cancelled following a High Court ruling over planning permission.
Last week, Rebekah Shaman, a resident in the area and a member of the Protect Brockwell Park group, successfully brought legal action against Lambeth Council over the use of parts of the park for the festivals.
In a ruling last week, Mr Justice Mould said that the authority's decision to certify the planned use of the land as lawful was "irrational". Lawyers for Ms Shaman and the Protect Brockwell Park group wrote to the council following the ruling, asking it to "confirm that the event has been cancelled" and to clear any fencing or infrastructure, and stating that Brockwell Live did not have planning permission.
But on Monday, a spokesperson for Brockwell Live said that no events would be cancelled, with Lambeth Council confirming that the event's organisers, Summer Events Limited, had reapplied for planning permission.
Earlier this week, O'Hanna was charged by postal requisition and will appear before Westminster Magistrates Court on June 18, the Metropolitan Police confirmed. The band strongly deny the charges brought against O'Hanna. Taking to Instagram to issue a lengthy statement, the band 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 this 'offence' and will vehemently defend ourselves. This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction. We are not the story. Genocide is. As 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? To restrict our travel ability. To prevent us speaking to young people across the world. To silence voices of compassion. To prosecute artists who dare to 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 IDF units they arm and fly spy plane missions for are the real terrorists, the whole world can see it.
"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 court. We will win. Free Palestine." Officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command were made aware on April 22 of an online video from the event, the force said.
An investigation led to the Crown Prosecution Service authorising the charge. Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Police said Kneecap were being investigated by counter-terrorism police after videos emerged allegedly showing the band calling for the deaths of MPs and shouting "up Hamas, up Hezbollah".
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wales Online
24 minutes ago
- Wales Online
Madeleine McCann suspect sent letter about case to police, reports say
Madeleine McCann suspect sent letter about case to police, reports say He reportedly said 'decisive questions can never be answered' Christian Brueckner, in a light-coloured suit, stands next to his lawyer prior to the verdict in his trial on five unrelated sex crimes in Germany last year (Image: MICHAEL MATTHEY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images ) The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann sent a letter to police saying "decisive questions can never be answered", according to reports. Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, reportedly sent a letter to officers saying questions which would implicate him in the case of the three-year-old British girl, who vanished from the same resort 18 years ago, cannot be answered. In the note, seen and translated by The Sun newspaper, Brueckner reportedly wrote: "It is the important questions, the decisive questions, that can never be answered. "Was I or my vehicle clearly seen near the crime scene on the night of the crime? "Is there DNA evidence of me at the crime scene? Are there DNA traces of the injured party in my vehicle? "Are there other traces/DNA carriers of the injured party in my possession? Photos? Article continues below "And, don't forget, is there a body/corpse? All no, no no." It is not clear when the letter was written. Brueckner spent time in the Praia de Luz area between 2000 and 2017 and had photographs and videos of himself near a reservoir. It comes as German and Portuguese investigators finished three days of searching a 120-acre stretch of land near Lagos, Portugal, on Thursday as part of attempts to source evidence to implicate Brueckner. In the searches, requested by German authorities, crews spent three days scouring scrubland and abandoned structures. Brueckner is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought. In October last year he was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Madeleine McCann was three years old when she vanished on May 3, 2007, after her parents left her asleep in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve, Portugal. Madeleine McCann (Image: PA ) Since then hers has become one of the highest-profile unsolved missing person cases in the world with British, Portuguese, and European police forces involved in the investigation. Police forces from across Europe have launched multiple searches for Madeleine since her disappearance in 2007. Early efforts focused on the Praia da Luz resort where she was last seen in her family's holiday apartment. In 2013 British police began Operation Grange, a formal investigation into the case. Searches have included digging in scrubland, draining reservoirs, and using sniffer dogs and ground-penetrating radar. Most recently German authorities searched the suspect's old place of residence in Praia da Luz, covering a large patch of land near the home of their prime suspect and the McCanns' holiday apartment. Brueckner moved to Portugal in 1995 after serving a two-year prison sentence in Germany for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl in 1994. He is known to have been renting a cottage in Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine's disappearance. Soon after the media descended on the resort in 2007 he moved back to Germany. Police have previously claimed he made a 30-minute phone call from the same area just an hour before Madeleine disappeared. He is alleged to have confessed on two occasions to kidnapping and sexually abusing the toddler – once to a friend in a German bar in 2017 and again to his prison cellmate in 2020. The German national was formally identified as a suspect in 2022 but has denied any involvement. He also denied committing the 2005 rape for which he was convicted of in 2019. In October 2024 he was acquitted of two charges rape and two of sexual abuse in a German trial where it was argued there was a lack of evidence and witnesses who were not credible. Brueckner has not been charged in the McCann case but German authorities began investigating him in June 2020 for her alleged kidnap and murder. Article continues below German authorities maintain that he is the main suspect in Madeleine's disappearance and are pushing for charges before his scheduled release in September.
Belfast Telegraph
24 minutes ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Andrew Doyle: ‘If you support freedom of speech, you have to support people's right to say the things you don't much want to hear'
Derry writer and commentator Andrew Doyle talks about his new book, The End of Woke, why old-fashioned liberalism needs to make a comeback, and writing a sitcom with Graham Linehan 'I've seen people getting very, very angry about the cancellation of Kneecap,' says Andrew Doyle, the Derry-born writer, political commentator and satirist. 'These are the same people who have called for similar cancellations of others. 'And I'd like to think they would realise that they've sowed the seeds of that by pushing for cancellations when they don't approve [of something] — or whatever it might be. But I'm not sure they've really grasped the hypocrisy.'
Spectator
2 hours ago
- Spectator
The truth about the 1984 miners' strike
On 6 March 1984, I found myself smack-bang in the middle of the largest industrial dispute in post-war history. As the son of a fifth-generation miner whose bedroom window looked out onto Pye Hill Pit in Selston – the remote Nottinghamshire mining village I called home – I couldn't help but be caught up in the miners' strike. And over its 363 days, I watched with bemused anger as a series of nods, winks, slights of hand and outright lies were fashioned into a hard and fast history. On one side we had the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) principled president Arthur Scargill and the striking miners, fighting to save British mining. On the other side, Nottinghamshire's moneygrubbing scabs, intent on murdering Old King Coal – aided by Margaret Thatcher and the rozzers. Admittedly, the media didn't spell it out quite so plainly, but there were enough headlines and emotion-heavy images to make sure we all got the message.
