Kneecap yesterday accused the UK government of having “wasted over a million pounds” on the criminal case against band member Mo Chara, who is accused of breaching antiterrorism laws by displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London gig in 2024.
The group made that claim as the High Court in London considered an appeal by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, which wants the court to reverse a ruling from last year that saw the criminal case against Mo Chara thrown out based on a legal technicality.
The CPS argues that if the decision to dismiss this case is allowed to stand it will have an impact on how prosecutors go about pursuing future similar cases, but Kneecap’s lawyers disagree.
Ahead of yesterday’s court hearing, Kneecap wrote on social media, “today was a waste of public time and public money. We now believe over a million pounds has been wasted. Tax payer money that could and should have been spent on improving the lives of ordinary people”.
The group once again dubbed the criminal case against Mo Chara as “a distraction from the complicity of the British government in genocide” in Gaza, adding “today more Palestinians were murdered by Israel, more homes demolished and more children dead due to cold and lack of aid not permitted to enter by Israel”. That, they insisted, “is the ONLY thing about this whole witch-hunt worth talking about”.
Last year Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring agreed with Kneecap’s lawyers that prosecutors had missed a crucial deadline when instigating the terror charges against Mo Chara. It was on that basis that the magistrate dismissed the criminal case against the rapper.
Under the relevant laws, Mo Chara had to be charged within six months of the alleged incident, which he was, on 21 May 2025. However, Kneecap’s lawyers argued, the Attorney General’s approval was also required before any charges could be formally filed and that approval wasn’t issued until 22 May. Therefore the charges only became valid on 22 May, one day too late.
At the original hearing, the CPS insisted that the Attorney General’s approval wasn’t actually required for the charges to be filed, and only needed to be in place before the start of any court hearing. But the judge rejected the CPS’s interpretation of the rules.
Having appealed last year’s judgement, the CPS basically presented the same argument in the High Court yesterday, with its legal representative Paul Jarvis insisting that its interpretation of the rules is consistent with judgements in past cases. And, added Jarvis, if Goldspring’s judgement stands, current CPS processes and guidelines will need to be changed.
But Kneecap’s lawyer disagreed. Jude Bunting argued that the deadline was actually missed in Mo Chara’s case because of a simple admin error, with prosecutors incorrectly believing that the six month deadline expired on 22 May. Therefore the issue here isn’t really any disagreement over prosecution rules, but instead the CPS not wanting to admit one of its own staff made an error that torpedoed its case.
“The problem that arose here is unlikely to ever arise again”, Bunting said, adding, “this court should not be too cowed by the implications on other kinds of cases”.
The two judges hearing yesterday’s appeal said they had been given “a great deal to think about” and would publish a judgement at a future date.
After the hearing, Mo Chara’s bandmate DJ Próvaí told fans who had gathered outside the court, “it’s a reserved judgement, so we'll not know for another few weeks or a bit longer, but thank you very much and let’s keep getting the message out there”.