West Midlands Police Chief Craig Guildford came under fire during a Home Affairs Committee on Monday regarding the police’s decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending an away match against Aston Villa on November 6.
During the hearing, and according to reports in recent weeks, it transpired that some of the intelligence in the police’s report was bogus. This included dramatically incorrect statements, such as Maccabi Tel Aviv’s last match in the UK being against West Ham – something that never happened.
Additionally, on November 22, Dutch law enforcement told The Sunday Times that the British police force used false intelligence to secure the ban.
The claims in the West Midlands police intelligence report included that, during a match between Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam in 2024, Maccabi fans threw “innocent members of the public into the river,” that between 500 and 600 fans “intentionally targeted Muslim communities,” and that 5,000 police officers were deployed in response.
Sebastian Meijer, a spokesman for the Amsterdam division, told The Times that he did not recognize the West Midlands’ police finding that the Israelis were “highly organized, skilled fighters with a serious desire and will to fight with police and opposing groups,” and that in the only known case of a man thrown in the river, the victim was a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan.
The seemingly bogus claims were central to the exposition of Lord John Mann – the independent antisemitism advisor to the UK government – who raised significant concerns about the intelligence on which the risk assessment was based. In order to investigate the matter thoroughly, he went to Amsterdam to discuss the facts with the authorities.
The issues raised included who was arrested, where the arrests took place, and what the allegations were. He also has a statement of facts from the chief of police in Amsterdam. Lord Mann praised the policing operation in Amsterdam but said it was not fully applicable to the situation in Birmingham because “there were no arrests of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attacking local Dutch people.”
“The suggestion that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were going around Amsterdam trying to find local people specifically from the Muslim community, going into Muslim areas, didn’t happen,” he told the committee.
Mann acknowledged the ultra [fanatical] behavior by some of Maccabi’s fans. He noted that the Maccabi ultras mixed with Ajax ultras to drink alcohol, and that “they sang songs; many of them on both sides were hugely objectionable songs.” Nevertheless, on the day of the match itself there was only one arrest of an Israeli who was behaving inappropriately and one person from a pro-Palestine demonstration.
The problems began that evening. Mann relayed that there were a number of Israelis who were attacked in the street, leading to five hospitalizations and 30-40 minor injuries. There were no accounts of local people in the Netherlands being injured. As such, he raised concerns about the validity of the intelligence report used to ban away fans from attending the Aston Villa match, which assessed a risk of violence and disorder to the local community.
For Mann, the most troubling part of the report was the statement that “the most recent match Maccabi played in the UK was against West Ham in the Europa League on 9 November 2023. It marked Maccabi Tel Aviv’s last competitive appearance on UK soil to date.” However, such a match never took place. West Ham has in fact never played Maccabi and on that day was playing against a Greek team.
“What I would expect for a proper police intelligence report is someone would talk to the Metropolitan Police about what happened two years ago when these Maccabi hooligans, as they’re called, came to London because obviously there’ll have been problems,” Mann testified. “They couldn’t do that because the fixture didn’t take place.”
West Midlands police chief: ‘We acted with integrity’
From the offset of his testimony and questioning, Guildford stood behind his approach to intelligence gathering and the resulting assessment. He told the hearing that “any suggestions of any conspiracy on the part of West Midlands police are completely wrong and misleading. We’ve acted with integrity.”
He explained the process of decision-making in public order and safety events, which involves a gold, silver, and bronze operational commander. “We assess intelligence and information, we look at options, and we make decisions. We are apolitical, and we remember what our core responsibilities are, and we try all the time to make decisions which are proportionate, legal, and necessary in these circumstances.”
The West Midlands police chief testified that from “the get-go” the police were planning to facilitate the match with both sets of fans, but on September 17, “assessed the risk of disorder and disruption to be high.” On October 1, he sat down with the chief inspector who had spoken in an unrecorded session to the three Dutch police commanders (gold, silver, and bronze).
“The information provided from the Dutch was very clear in terms of they reflected on the days before, during, and after the match as a result of clashes between the Maccabi ultras and the local Muslim community [and concluded] that the police in Amsterdam were very stretched because they hadn’t assessed the match as being high risk.”
The Dutch police said they deployed 2,000 riot police on the day of the match. West Midlands police assessed they would need 5,000 policemen to meet the need, which would stretch the force thin.
Guildford then went on to say that the Dutch police told his chief inspector that the Israeli “ultras were very well organized, militaristic in the way that they operated. They attacked members of the local community, including taxi drivers, tore down flags; people were thrown into the river, and definitely the singing.
They further stated that this group specifically targeted the local Muslim community deliberately. Members of the local and wider Muslim community subsequently reacted and attacked Maccabi fans on match day both before and after the match.
“The Dutch commanders were unequivocal. They would never want to have Maccabi Tel Aviv playing in Amsterdam again in the future.”
As such, Guildford said the decision was made to restrict away fans based on “a very careful risk assessment” that was “swayed by the commanders of the Dutch police.” Liberal Democrats MP and Home Affairs Committee member Paul Kohler asked Guildford whether he was still asserting that all the intelligence was true or whether it was flawed.
Guildford responded that he has “no reason to doubt the integrity of the chief inspector who spoke to three Dutch commanders.”
Kohler highlighted that the Dutch commanders – as already mentioned – distanced themselves from the claims made in the West Midlands report.
Kohler then said the statements in the report that “500 to 600 Maccabi fans intentionally targeted Muslim communities,” “200 [are] linked to the IDF, fans [were] thrown in the river, serious assaults on the Muslim taxi drivers” have all been contradicted by the Dutch police.
“You believe that it actually happened, and yet the Dutch police are saying it didn’t happen. So why do you still think it happened?” he asked.
Guildford replied by saying “There is lots of pressure locally on the Dutch police as a result of this match,” insinuating that their recent statements in The Times were made under duress.
“I’ve since spoken to Peter Holler, the gold commander, and Sebastian Meijer from the Dutch police, and they are very clear they’re under a lot of pressure, in their words, from city hall. And their position as reported to The Sunday Times was, ‘We don’t recognize this, we don’t recognize that, we don’t recognize this.””
When asked about the fictitious statements about the West Ham match, Guildford admitted that his “preparation was wrong, but that doesn’t mean the document was wrong.”
Mike O’Hara, assistant chief constable in the West Midlands and the gold commander for the fixture, stood behind his intelligence assessment.
“I think my position is that the situation in Amsterdam is definitely open to interpretation, but, broadly, the Maccabi Tel Aviv risk fans clashed with local communities and created huge challenges around safety and policing and keeping the calm,” he told the committee.