A Palestinian student who celebrated the October 7 Hamas atrocities has won an appeal against the Home Office’s move to revoke her visa.
Dana Abuqamar, 20, had said she was “full of pride… and really full of joy” after the Iran-backed terror group killed thousands of Israeli civilians and troops late last year.
At a pro-Palestine demonstration at her university just hours after the horror attacks, Abuqamar told Sky News: “We are full of pride.
“We are really, really full of joy [at] what has happened… We are proud that Palestinian resistance has come to this point.”
Dana Abuqamar had said she was ‘full of pride… and really full of joy’ after Hamas killed thousands of Israeli civilians and troops
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At the time, then-policing minister Chris Philp said: “This is sick. I’m appalled that anyone holds these repugnant views.”
The Jordanian-Canadian citizen of Palestinian origin was then stripped of her visa by the Home Office – partially at the behest of then-immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
Back in May, she had alleged the Home Office had “violated her human rights” by revoking her student visa because she posed a “risk to public security”.
But now, Judge Melanie Plimmer has ruled that the Home Office had violated Abuqamar’s human rights and her ability to practise freedom of speech under ECHR rules.
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At the time, then-policing minister Chris Philp said: ‘This is sick. I’m appalled that anyone holds these repugnant views’
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The judgment also claimed that she was “not an extremist” – and that by calling Israel an “apartheid” state she was expressing views consistent with human rights groups.
Despite her expression of joy at the so-called “Palestinian resistance” last October, the ruling said, “nowhere does the appellant express support for Hamas specifically, or their actions”.
“There is a clearly recognised and fundamental distinction between supporting the Palestinian cause and supporting Hamas and their actions,” the judgment added.
The Home Office, it was found, had failed to demonstrate that her presence in the UK was “not conducive to public good”.
Abuqamar said Jenrick’s intervention “sends a chilling message to activists”
PA
Reacting to the ruling, Abuqamar told The Guardian that she held fears that Britain’s immigration system was being politicised.
She also said Jenrick’s intervention “sends a chilling message to activists”, calling the former Tory Government’s crackdown “brutal”.
But the Home Office has remained tight-lipped.
A spokesman for the department said: “It is longstanding Government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases.”