CAA says CPS “ignoring Jewish victims” after it closes most police investigations into Labour antisemitism
Campaign Against Antisemitism has said that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is “ignoring Jewish victims” after it closed most police investigations into Labour antisemitism.
The Metropolitan Police has reportedly dropped fifteen of the 23 criminal investigations in relation to Labour antisemitism without charges. It is understood that the decisions in most of the cases were taken after the police asked the CPS for advice.
Seven cases are still under investigation, but there has only been one successful conviction in two years. In June, an expelled Labour activist, Mohson Rasool, 61, was convicted of sending a grossly offensive message online and given nine weeks’ community service.
The matter arose after the radio channel LBC and Campaign Against Antisemitism referred a secret dossier, which was compiled by the Labour Party and subsequently leaked, to the Metropolitan Police. Earlier this year, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police came under pressure for taking so long to decide on how to proceed even on the few cases that the CPS determined might be actionable.
The CPS has now reportedly ruled that the cases still held by the police did not meet the threshold for prosecution.
Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “While the rest of British society has been appalled by the rampant antisemitism in the Labour Party, the CPS is living on another planet. We referred cases from Labour to the police more than two years ago. At the time, the cases were said by top police officials and criminal barristers to be clear cut, but the CPS has only charged one of them and has now told the police to close cases on ten more activists.
“This is just the latest failure of the CPS to prosecute antisemitic hate crime. The CPS must stop ignoring Jewish victims and take antisemitic crime seriously. After years of vile antisemitic abuse from within the Labour Party, the CPS seems determined to do nothing at all about it.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that almost half of British Jews believe that the CPS is doing too little to fight antisemitism.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.