An Islamist activist who claimed that the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in London “were murdered” by Zionists is being investigated by British police, The Telegraph reports.
Nazim Ali, a director of the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), is accused of exploiting the tragedy during an Al-Quds Day demonstration in the days after the fire.
The Metropolitan Police said it was now investigating allegations of anti-Semitic comments made during the protest, according to The Telegraph.
Ali, who is managing partner of a private health clinic in west London, told the rally on June 18, “As we know in Grenfell, many innocents were murdered by Theresa May’s cronies, many of which are supporters of Zionist ideology.”
In video footage posted online, Ali goes on to say, “Let us not forget that some of the biggest corporations who were supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell, in those towers in Grenfell, the Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”
In another heated outburst, he says, “It is the Zionists who give money to the Tory party, to kill people in high rise blocks.... Careful, careful, careful of those rabbis who belong to the Board of Deputies, who have got blood on their hands.”
The participants in the Al-Quds Day march held up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flag as well as the flag of Hezbollah, which has been named in Britain as an illegal terror organization.
Supporters on the parade route held up banners reading “Zionism is Racism” and, “We are all Hezbollah.”
Al-Quds Day, which is marked on the final day of Ramadan, was initiated by Iran and is generally used to incite against Israelis and Jews.
Ali, who chaired the London rally, is listed as a director of the IHRC, which co-organizes the event in the UK. In 2012, Ali introduced Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, as the keynote speaker at the protest march, noted The Telegraph.
Corbyn did not attend this year’s event, though he has in the past come under fire for calling Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends" and for outright refusing to condemn those two terrorist organizations .
The Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism in the UK, said it was appalled by Ali’s comments and had reported him to the police. It said it was “grotesque” for Ali to link the Grenfell Tower disaster, in which more than 80 people perished, with his opposition to Zionism.
A CST spokesman said, according to The Telegraph, “In any circumstance, these comments would have been utterly hateful, but to hang them on what happened at Grenfell Tower beggared belief. It was, of course, a pro-Hezbollah demonstration, but such hatred would have been staggering even in Beirut or Tehran, never mind the streets of London.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said, “We received an allegation of anti-semitic comments and it is being investigated by detectives from Westminster CID. The inquiry continues.”
The IHRC would not respond to request for comment from The Telegraph.
Ali told the newspaper, “You have not presented what I said accurately in the wider context of what was said in the prelude to the minute's silence for Grenfell. As presented it sounds somewhat inelegant… To say that some of Theresa May or the Tory party's supporters are Zionists is hardly controversial.”