Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper during a visit to Cambridgeshire Police Headquarters, Huntingdon, April 10,
Government accused of scapegoating ethnic minorities after Home Office reveals plan to publish the nationalities of foreign criminals
LABOUR was accused of scapegoating ethnic minorities after the Home Office revealed it will publish the nationalities of foreign criminals for the first time today.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered officials to publish the data including the crimes that have been committed by the end of the year.
The move is expected to lead to “league tables” of foreign nationals showing which nationalities are more associated with particular crimes.It is the latest hard-line anti-immigration policy announced by the Home Office in recent weeks as Labour faces potential humiliation at the hands of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in next week’s local elections. Today MPs and migrant charities accused Ms Cooper of pandering to racism and stoking the possibility of riots.
Members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services pray by the bodies of fellow rescuers killed a week earlier by Israeli forces, during a funeral procession at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
“This report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” said the Israeli group Breaking the Silence.
The Israel Defense Forces’ report on the killing of 15 paramedics in Gaza last month was “sure to lead to increased demands for an independent investigation,” said one journalist for Sky News, which recently released an extensive account of the incident that experts and advocates have called a potential war crime.
The IDF said it had found “several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident” that took place on March 23, when Israeli troops opened fire on a convoy of vehicles that included ambulances, killing the 15 rescue workers.
But officials claimed that there was “no attempt to conceal the event” and the report suggested the firing of a deputy commander for providing an “inaccurate report” and the reprimanding of a commanding officer should satisfy the international outcry over the incident, after which United Nations and Palestinian Red Crescent officials discovered the medics’ bodies and their crushed rescue vehicles had been buried in a shallow mass grave.
An Israeli probe into Israel's killing of 15 Palestinian medical and rescue workers in Gaza finds no cover-up even though Israeli forces lied about their vehicles not having had their lights on and Israel continues to detain the sole survivor. https://t.co/p7Xi4DA2rV
“Is this meant to be a joke?” said Palestinian writer and poet Mosab Abu Toha after the IDF announced the commanders would be fired and reprimanded. “How is this supposed to help the children and families of these medics? …These war criminals should be arrested and handed over to the [International Criminal Court] for due legal processing.”
The IDF report found that six out of 15 Palestinians killed “were identified in a retrospective examination as Hamas terrorists,” but did not produce evidence to support the claim; Sky News, which released its investigation on on Friday, also did not find evidence.
The report also claimed that the army decided to “gather and cover the bodies to prevent further harm and clear the vehicles from the route in preparation for civilian evacuation”—an explanation for the buried bodies and ambulances.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the IDF’s claim that soldiers “did not randomly attack” the convoy but rather fired on suspected “terrorists” in “suspicious vehicles” was refuted by video evidence from the phone of one of the medics who was found in the mass grave—believed to be Refaat Radwan.
The video showed a convoy of clearly marked ambulances and fire truck, with headlights and flashing lights on—contradicting the IDF’s claim that the vehicles were driving with their lights off.
Despite the video evidence, the IDF report said there was “no evidence to support claims of execution” and accused those who have made such accusations of “blood libels.”
The Sky News report released Friday found that Israel’s claim that the medics were not fired at from a close distance was false and that expert analysis of Radwan’s cellphone video determined shots had been fired from as close as 12 meters away
Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer said that in the case of the medics’ killing, “video evidence exposed [the IDF’s] lies forcing this flimsy effort mascarading as accountability so they can sweep it under the rug.”
Israel is able to repeatedly attack civilians and aid workers and claim that their deaths were accidental, Munayyer suggested, because “western media is willing to believe as fact initial Israeli narratives around atrocities.”
Given how frequently this happens, there is simply no other plausible explanation for the failure of western media to adjust by treating the Israeli military a source of information without credibility than this: they want to support their atrocities.
The Israeli probe found “professional failures,” said former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, but the IDF “doesn’t seem to have examined the rules of engagement, approved by senior officials, that permit killing before clear identification of a combatant.”
The killing of the paramedics underscored the “atmosphere of impunity” in Gaza, said one Israeli policy analyst.
“What we know is that we cannot trust the Israeli [military]. Unless The New York Times would have gotten hold of that video clip, I don’t think that we would know the truth,” Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera. “It would be another cover-up.”
Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice told Al Jazeera that the IDF report “invites many questions that it will be difficult, I suspect, for the [Israeli military] to answer.”
“For example, [there is] the proposition that six of these people were Hamas, presumably members of Hamas on active [military] service, not people who might have been associated with Hamas in some way. No documentary evidence at all is identified [for that],” he told the outlet.
Breaking the Silence, a group made up of Israeli veterans of the IDF who speak out against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, said the report was “riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details.”
“We all remember when the IDF claimed that the ambulances emergency lights weren’t on—and then we saw the footage proving otherwise. Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” said the group.
“Another day, another cover-up,” Breaking the Silence added. “More innocent lives taken, with no accountability.”
Hugh Kirsch, 66, with his sister Oona Herzberg. Hundreds of contract disputes have erupted between cash-strapped councils and financially struggling care providers. Photograph: Oona Kirsch
Hugh Kirsch’s case one of wave of evictions of vulnerable residents caused by crisis in adult social care funding
A pensioner with severe learning disabilities who was a victim of one of the most notorious care home abuse scandals of recent years has been told he faces eviction over a dispute about who pays for the costs of his state-funded care.
The family of Hugh Kirsch, 66, said they had been warned he would have to leave his supported home because the council that funds his care refused to increase fees in line with costs and his care provider could no longer afford to subsidise the price.
The case is one of a growing wave of evictions of vulnerable residents caused by the crisis in adult social care funding in which hundreds of contract disputes erupt between cash-strapped councils and financially struggling care providers.
Kirsch’s sister Oona Herzberg said he was “trapped in the crosshairs of funding issues that have nothing to do with him”, and urged his funder, Haringey council, to fulfil its responsibilities to meet his care needs.
She told the Guardian: “It would be cruel and inhuman to evict Hughie. He would be traumatised after what he has been though, and so would we. He would be totally bewildered and upset, and would withdraw inside himself.”
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
‘People might have a lot of issues that need to be dealt with, but they’re not dealt with by sending them to prison.’ Photograph: Alex Segre/Alamy
Exclusive: Analysis of antisocial behaviour injunctions found 57% of people had no legal representation at breach hearings that led to imprisonment
Almost 250 people have been imprisoned for breaching antisocial behaviour injunctions (asbis) since 2020, with people being jailed for sleeping rough, begging, feeding birds and making a noise.
Analysis from academics at the universities of York and Coventry found that out of 242 cases examined from 2020-2024, there were 72 cases of imprisonment for general nuisance, 61 for abusive language and 51 for noise.
They found that 57% of people did not have legal representation at the breach hearing that led to their imprisonment: out of 97 recorded cases, 55 defendants were not represented.
“People are not getting proper representation and they get sent to prison for sometimes long periods, weeks and months. There’s no sentencing guidance for this,” said Prof Caroline Hunter from York Law School. “People might have a lot of issues that need to be dealt with, but they’re not dealt with by sending them to prison.”
An asbi is a civil injunction used to tackle antisocial behaviour, and can be issued to anyone age 10 or over. Breaching an injunction is not a criminal offence, but those who disobey an order are guilty of contempt of court and can be sent to prison.
Civil injunctions are also used in cases involving protesters, and land disputes involving Gypsies and Travellers.
…
Housing associations accounted for 45% of the asbis where someone was committed for sentence, while local authorities accounted for 41%.
The analysis found people were imprisoned for an average of 95 days for breaches, with Gypsy and Traveller cases disproportionately more likely to receive a higher sentence – 70% of those cases were in the highest quartile for sentencing, compared with 24% of antisocial behaviour cases.
The reports raised concerns about people being imprisoned even where there was no evidence of harm or inconvenience caused.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “New Respect Orders will give police and councils the powers they need to clamp down on persistent antisocial behaviour and to place tough restrictions on the worst offenders.”
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer confirms that his government is cnutier than Suella Braverman on killing the right to protest.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper during a visit to Cambridgeshire Police Headquarters, Huntingdon, April 10,
