UK government urges police official to quit over ban of Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans

LONDON (AP) — The U.K.'s home secretary on Wednesday urged the head of one of the country's leading police forces to resign following a report on how fans from Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv were banned from a match against Premier League side Aston Villa in Birmingham last year.

Shabana Mahmood told lawmakers that the independent report's findings into the decision by West Midlands Police for the Nov. 6 match were “devastating,” not least because it overstated the threat posed by Maccabi fans while understating the risk to them from traveling to the match.

“The ultimate responsibility for the force’s failure to discharge its duties on a matter of such national importance rests with the chief constable, and it is for that reason that I must declare today that the chief constable of West Midlands Police no longer has my confidence,” she said.

The decision to ban Maccabi fans was widely criticized at the time, including by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

West Midlands Police said at the time it had deemed the match to be high risk “based on current intelligence and previous incidents,” including violence and hate crimes that took place when Maccabi played Ajax in Amsterdam last season.

The ban came at a time of heightened concerns about antisemitism in Britain following a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue and calls from Palestinians and their supporters for a sports boycott of Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza.

Mahmood said the report by the chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke, found that West Midlands Police “conducted little engagement with the Jewish community and none with the Jewish community in Birmingham before a decision was taken.”

She said the report characterized the police’s approach as “confirmation bias” and “rather than follow the evidence, the force sought only the evidence to support their desired position to ban the fans.” The report did not find the police force was antisemitic.

Mahmood said she didn't have the power to fire Chief Constable Craig Guildford herself for his “failure of leadership” as a result of a policy change by the previous Conservative government in 2011, but she was looking to reinstate that power to home secretaries. Currently, locally elected police and crime commissioners have that power.

Guildford did not immediately comment on the report Wednesday.