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Palestine Action has condemned a briefing by Home Office officials that it could be funded by Iran as “baseless smears”.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced plans on Monday to ban the protest group, which takes direct action against Israeli arms companies in the UK, under anti-terrorism laws.
She made no mention during her statement of suspected Iranian links but the Times reported that Home Office officials had said they were investigating whether the group is funded by Iran.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said: “This is a baseless investigation and ridiculous investigation. We are funded by ordinary people who support us.
“They are doing it because they don’t believe that banning an organisation causing damage to weapons factories and companies who enable the production of weapons sits well with a lot of the public, and therefore they’re trying to create a smear campaign in order to justify the proscription.
“You would think that politicians would want to vote based on hard facts. Instead, it’s just saying you’re investigating someone for X, Y, Z.”
The group also pointed out that a crowdfunder posted on CrowdJustice on Tuesday afternoon to raise £10,000 in legal fees to fight proscription had raised more than £5,000 in its first hour. It said Gareth Peirce from Birnberg Peirce solicitors, who represented the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, has been instructed to represent the group.
The anonymous Home Office briefing about Iran came two days after the advocacy group We Believe in Israel tweeted: “Behind Palestine Action’s theatre of resistance stands a darker puppeteer: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … Palestine Action is the mask. The IRGC is the face.”
The only evidence it provided was saying that the IRGC’s vocabulary “echoes in Palestine Action’s slogans”.
We Believe in Israel launched a campaign to ban Palestine Action this month and language from a report it published was similar to that used by Cooper in her statement.
The decision to proscribe Palestine Action – the first time such a proposal has been made in relation to a direct action protest group – came after activists from the group broke into RAF Brize Norton on Friday and defaced two military aircraft with spray paint in an embarrassing security breach.
The ban would place the group alongside the likes of al-Qaida, Islamic State and National Action, and make it a criminal offence to be a member of the group or show support for it. The proposal, which will go before parliament next week, has been heavily criticised by groups such as Amnesty International and Liberty.
Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director, Areeba Hamid, said: “Proscribing Palestine Action would be a grave mistake. Unlike al-Qaida, Wagner group and the other groups classed as ‘terrorist organisations’, Palestine Action does not advocate for violent armed action or for people to be harmed.
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“They exist to decommission the weapons used to commit war crimes. Proscribing them would mark a dark turn for our democracy and a new low for a government already intent on stamping out the right to protest.
“The police already have laws to prosecute any individuals found guilty of a crime. And as a non-violent organisation with ‘peace’ in our name, we would never defend violence. But outlawing an entire organisation and all of its supporters would be a dangerous step.”
The former justice secretary Charlie Falconer said on Sunday that the “sort of demonstration” at Brize Norton would not justify proscription, “so there must be something else that I don’t know about”.
Cooper’s statement appeared to offer no new information about the group.
It also referred to an action against “a Jewish-owned business in north London” as neither “legitimate or peaceful”, but did not mention that Palestine Action said it had targeted the business in question because it is registered as a landlord of the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems UK’s factory in Kent.
