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A dossier has been submitted to the Metropolitan Police accusing 10 British nationals of war crimes while fighting for Israel in Gaza.
A team of experts, including leading human rights barrister Michael Mansfield KC, compiled the report alleging crimes against humanity, including targeted killings of civilians and aid workers and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.
The ten Britons, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, are further accused of involvement in the forced transfer and displacement of civilians and coordinated attacks on protected sites, including historic monuments and religious sites, as part of their service with the Israeli military.
The 240-page document was handed to the War Crimes Team at Scotland Yard on Monday, calling for an urgent investigation.
Israel denies that any war crimes have been committed during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians.
Mr Mansfield, renowned for his work on the Hillsborough disaster, the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the Birmingham Six, warned “no one is above the law” as he handed in the evidence.
“In the last 18 months we have witnessed international crimes unfold,” he said. “Our leaders have done little if anything to prevent the suffering of millions of innocent Palestinians.
“We ask the War Crimes Team to take this report seriously, investigate, and if proven, arrest and try the individuals named.
“British nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine.”
The report, which covers alleged offences committed in Gaza from October 2023 to May 2024, was submitted on behalf of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), which are representing Palestinians in Gaza and Britain.
Testimony in the report from witnesses in Gaza recounts the horror of seeing bodies scattered and a mass grave at a hospital.
“I could not bear what I saw: dead bodies scattered next to each other,” said a witness whose relatives were killed in an Israeli attack.
“I could not recognise them as they were covered with a blanket… I took off the cover and saw the bodies of my uncle and his son, my nephews, and my brother-in-law along with other displaced people’s bodies.”
Another witness cited in the report claimed soldiers “ordered my father, husband and children to strip”, adding: “They were taken one by one into the middle of the glass-strewn living room, where a soldier beat them with an electric cable and a large billiard stick.”
A third witness, who was at a medical facility, saw corpses “scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave”.
A bulldozer “ran over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead”, the witness said.
A total of 94 legal and human rights experts have signed a letter of support, urging the Met’s war crimes team to investigate the allegations.
Paul Heron, legal director of PILC, which commissioned the document, said: “Shockingly, British citizens have actively served in Israel’s armed forces, directly contributing to atrocities.
“As a law centre based in Britain, we have a duty to stand up. We’re filing our report to make clear these war crimes are not in our name.”
