Pro-Iran demonstrators collect for London Al-Quds ‘hate rally’ with 1,000 riot police on alert

Thousands of pro-Iran demonstrators have gathered for an Al-Quds ‘hate rally’ in London, with 1,000 riot police being placed on alert. 

Demonstrators gathered on the South Bank of the Thames for prayers and brandished a placard declaring ‘US Israel hands off Iran’.

Pictures from the protest showed people holding pictures of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his successor, Mojtada Khamenei. 

The march has been reduced to a two-hour static protest after the Home Secretary this week banned the planned Al-Quds Day march.

The rally, organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), was due to head through the streets of London but was curtailed by Shabana Mahmood due to the risk of serious disorder.   

The Met Police is using the Thames as a buffer to separate pro-Iran demonstrators from a counter-protest who have been told to gather on the north side of the river.

Both groups have been told they must leave the area at 3pm. 

Mohammad, 29, originally from Iraq, brandished a picture of Mojtaba Khamenei and told the Daily Mail: ‘He didn’t come into Europe or America, they went to him and killed his father.

‘I support the Iranian regime because of what happened to us in Iraq. America and Britain obliterated my country, and the same thing is happening in Iran.’

Another protester waving a flag said: ‘I support my country Iran. I came here to study 40 years ago and stayed on. I’m very sad about this war. America has killed schoolgirls.

‘War is not good for anyone, it damages civilisation and takes us back.’

Police have already sounded a warning that they will arrest anyone chanting intifada slogans, showing support for Palestine Action, or holding placards inciting hate.

More than 1,000 riot police are on standby at a protest centre, while uniformed officers will protect mosques and synagogues in the capital and keep guard at the Israeli and Iranian embassies.

The Met believes more than 12,000 pro-Iranian protesters will take part, with thousands among the counter-protesters, raising the likelihood of violent clashes despite the river acting as a buffer. 

Al-Quds Day began in Iran in 1979 after the Ayatollah’s revolution. It spread to the UK, and has been held in London for 40 years. 

The IHRC said on Wednesday that it ‘strongly condemned’ the decision to ban its march and would continue with a static protest.

Ms Mahmood had said the move was necessary ‘to prevent serious public disorder, due to the scale of the protest and multiple counter-protests, in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East’.

The Home Secretary added: ‘Should a stationary demonstration proceed, the police will be able to apply strict conditions.

‘I expect to see the full force of the law applied to anyone spreading hatred and division instead of exercising their right to peaceful protest.’

On Saturday, it emerged the group had received £458,500 in taxpayer-funded donations since 2020, as it is recognised by HMRC for Gift Aid. This allowed it to claim 25p for every £1 received in donations.

Donations came despite IHRC being under a Charity Commission investigation, and an anti-terrorist Prevent report in 2023 describing it as an ‘Islamist group ideologically aligned with Iran’.

Previous Al-Quds Day rallies have been marred by arrests and the burning of Israeli flags.

Last Saturday, a pro-Iranian protester was stabbed during a rally in West Finchley, North London. On its website, IHRC condemned the ban on the march.

It said: ‘The police have brazenly abandoned their sworn principle of policing without fear or favour and have capitulated to the pressure of the Zionist lobby.’

Met assistant commissioner Ade Adelekan said: ‘We did not take the decision to ban the march lightly. This is a unique set of circumstances and it was our assessment that the risk of public disorder was so severe, we did not have any other choice.’

It is the first time in 14 years that Scotland Yard has banned a protest march. 

A fundraiser for the group leading the Al-Quds Day rally was filmed shouting ‘death to the IDF’ and ‘Khamenei makes us proud’ at a protest last weekend.

Raza Kazim attended a pro-Iran demonstration outside the US embassy last Saturday after the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an Israeli drone strike.

Footage shows him leading crowds with a chant of ‘say it clear, say it loud, Khamenei makes us proud’. In another video, he is seen yelling ‘death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]’ – a slogan described as hate speech last year by Sir Keir Starmer.

Mr Kazim – who leads a course training maths teachers at Middlesex University – is a trustee of the IHRC trust, the charitable arm that funds the IHRC. 

The IHRC was described in the independent review of the Prevent strategy as an ‘Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime, that has a history of extremist links and terrorist sympathies’.

It claims it is a separate entity to the IHRC trust, although they share the same business address and phone number.

In a statement reported, Mr Kazim praised Khamenei – whose regime has killed thousands of protesters – for ‘his principled opposition to systems of racial and political oppression’.

He said the IDF chant was a ‘creative and forceful expression calling for the dismantling of a genocidal military institution responsible for terrorising, killing, raping and torturing Palestinians, while enforcing a system of apartheid that denies their basic humanity’.

Lord Walney, the Government’s former extremism adviser, called his comments ‘deeply disturbing’.

Mr Kazim has organised previous Al-Quds Day marches. The event – named after the Arabic word for Jerusalem – was created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution to express opposition to Israel.

Other IHRC figures have gone on the record to praise the Iranian regime.

They include its co-founder and chair Massoud Shadjareh, who was previously filmed recalling a meeting he had with Khamenei.