Fahad Ansari, London Defender of Hamas and Other Terrorists

[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

Fahad Ansari, a solicitor and the sole full-time employee of the London law firm of Riverway Law — “Our Team” at Riverway Law consists of Ansari and a single consultant — has for two decades been defending people who have been linked to, inter alia, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, and Hamas. Now Ansari wants the British government to remove the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. A detailed report on Fahad Ansari can be found here: “U.K. Law Firm Advocating for Hamas Has History of Defending Jihadis,” by Jules Gomes, Focus On Western Islamism, April 25, 2025:

A legal firm that has a history of defending jihadis linked to Islamist terror militias including Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and the Taliban, is challenging the U.K. government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Riverway Law, a London-based firm acting on behalf of Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas’s International Relations and Legal Office, submitted an appeal to the Home Office on April 9, demandingHamas’ “deproscription from the British government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups.” The controversy has prompted researchers to document pro-Hamas statements issued by the firm’s lead solicitor, Fahad Ansari, who authored the brief in question.

The Brief

In his witness statement, Marzouk called Britain “the architect of our suffering through its collaboration with the Zionist project for over a century,” and argued that by “maintaining its ban” on Hamas, the U.K. was “in breach of its obligations under international law.”

By proscribing Hamas, Britain is “complicit” in Israel’s “ongoing acts of genocide,” Marzouk said. “Hamas is not a terrorist group” but “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project,” he claimed.

Rejecting accusations of antisemitism and targeting of Jews, the statement argued that Hamas’ founding charter, which cites a hadith as a prooftext for killing Jews and pledges that Islam will “obliterate” Israel, was “drafted without consultation with the senior leadership” who were imprisoned or exiled at the time.

The law firm’s 106-page application to Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, called for the ban to be lifted in accordance with European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) protections for freedom of speech, arguing that Hamas poses “no threat to the U.K. people.” It does, represent a threat to the lives of its critics who condemn its policies in Gaza, however. In early April, Hamas was accused of murdering a 22-year-old man who attended an anti-Hamas protest in March.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, expressed disdain for Hamas’s appeal, stating that it is proof of how desperate the terror organization has become in recent months.

Our initial review of the so-called ‘Hamas case’ is that the submission is amateurish and desperate. It demonstrates that Hamas is struggling by any means necessary to stay afloat as pressure is brought to bear on the murderous Islamist group. If Hamas is no longer proscribed, it can be funded from the U.K.

“It’s a grotesque irony that the case to de-proscribe Hamas is being made as a human rights claim,” Falter lamented. “Yes, a group that has deprived well in excess of a thousand Jews of their lives and two million Gazans of their safety is basing its appeal on human rights.”

No, of course Riverway Law, or rather its only full-time employee, Fahad Ansari — a solicitor, not a barrister, who will never come close to taking silk — has nothing to say. Could he deny that he has taken on many cases of people linked to such terrorist groups as Al Qaeda and Hamas? Or pretend that he has never called for the “spirit of jihad” to be revived in the UK? Could Ansari claim to have not the slightest desire to remove from Hamas its designation in the UK as a “terrorist group”? You know the answer to those questions.

There are many, including Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Justice Minister, who think that Ansari’s ties to terrorists should cause him to be struck off. After reading the piece above, I am one of them. What about you?