Irish rap group Kneecap have issued a defiant statement after band member Mo Chara was charged with a terror offence in the UK.
The charge related to an incident in late 2024 where he allegedly displayed a Hezbollah flag during a London gig.
Although the show at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town took place on November 21, 2024, the Metropolitan Policesay they only became aware of the incident in April 2025, after a video surfaced online showing Mo Chara — real name Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh — onstage with the flag.
In a statement shared to Instagram, the group said: “We deny this ‘offense’ and will vehemently defend ourselves. This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction. We are not the story. Genocide is. As they profit from genocide, they use an ‘anti-terror law’ against us for displaying a flag thrown on stage. A charge not serious enough to even warrant their ‘crown court,’ instead a court that doesn’t have a jury. What’s the objective?”
They added: “To restrict our ability to travel. To prevent us speaking to young people across the world. To silence voices of compassion. To prosecute artists who dare speak out. Instead of defending innocent people, or the principles of international law they claim to uphold, the powerful in Britain have abetted slaughter and famine in Gaza, just as they did in Ireland for centuries. Then, like now, they claim justification.
The band ended their statement with a pointed message: “We stand proudly with the people. You stand complicit with the war criminals. We are on the right side of history. You are not. We will fight you in your court. We will win. Free Palestine.”
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The video that prompted the charge reportedly shows Kneecap shouting “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” and telling the crowd, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are designated terrorist organisations in the UK, and it is a criminal offence to express support for them.
Police stated that O’Hanna displayed the flag “in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation,” which led to the Crown Prosecution Service authorising charges.
After news of the investigation broke, the group clarified their position. “Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah,” they said, describing the viral footage as “an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, [that] is now being exploited and weaponized, as if it were a call to action.”
Ó hAnnaidh received the charge by mail, and is scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on June 18th.
