Antisemitic videos, including one which including a claim that the Holocaust was a “lie and a fake” and a call for the death of Jews, that were broadcast to British students are being investigated by the Charity Commission.
One of the videos featured General Saeed Ghasemi, a former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, calling for British students to “bring an end to the life of the oppressors and occupiers, Zionists and Jews across the world”.
It also called for the “good students of Europe” to be added to the “beautiful list of the soldier of the resistance” after denying the existence of the Holocaust.
Another of the videos was livestreamed at an event held in west London at the Kanoon Towhid Islamic centre to honour Iran’s dead military leader Gen Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US air strike in 2020 because of his role in fomenting terrorism abroad. Chants of “death to the Jews” were reportedly heard at the event.
The third video featured another Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Corps commander Hossein Yekta claiming that universities had become “the battlefront” and calling on students to become “soft-war officers” in an apparent attempt to recruit them as Iranian propagandists.
The three videos, the existence of which was reported on Tuesday by the BBC, were each shown in 2020 or 2021 and promoted by the Islamic Students Association of Britain, which is understood to use the Kanoon Towhid Islamic Centre as a meeting place.
They are now being investigated by the Charity Commission with the revelation about their existence following warnings by MI5 and counter-terrorism police about increased “hostile state” activity by Iran in this country, including attempted assassination plots.
Alicia Kearns, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told the BBC that the videos were “inciting violence”, “division” and “hatred” and were a “brazen act of radicalisation.”
"It makes me really worried about the state of our society, everyone should be horrified by what they’re seeing in those videos,” she said. “It’s division, it’s hatred. It’s inciting violence, potentially it’s incredibly serious.”“Everyone should be horrified by what they’re seeing in those videos,” she added “Potentially it’s incredibly serious.”
The Al-Tawheed Charitable Trust, which runs the Kanoon Towhid centre in west London, failed to respond to the BBC’s requests for an explanation of the event on its premises.
The Islamic Students Association of Britain insisted its activities were lawful and that it did not support any government or anyone who did not respect people of all backgrounds and faiths.
