In support of palestinian, protestor dressed as holocaust survivors with crescent & star symbol

Defence affairs

Scotland Yard has been accused of “two-tier” justice after police ignored a pro-Palestinian protester dressed as a Holocaust concentration camp inmate.

Jewish leaders and MPs criticised the “religiously-aggravated” outfit worn by Maria Gallastegui, in which she replaced the star worn by inmates with an Islamic symbol.

They complained that police failed to challenge a protest “clearly designed to cause distress”, but warned men “waving Israeli flags” at a Palestine Action march that they could be guilty of breaching the peace.

Ms Gallastegui, 66, a full-time protester who gave up her job as a coach driver nearly 20 years ago for a life of activism, joined a protest against plans to ban Palestine Action after its activists attacked RAF aircraft with paint.

Critics contrasted her treatment with that of Hamit Coskun, who was prosecuted and fined for a religiously aggravated public order offence after he set fire to a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London.

Free speech advocates argue that offensive behaviour should not be criminalised, regardless of whether it is committed by protesters against Islam, such as Mr Coskun, or against Israel.

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “We appear to have a two-tier blasphemy law in this country, which protects Islam from offensive references but not others.”

Alex Hearn, of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said: “Dressing as a concentration camp inmate, with the yellow patch replaced by an Islamic symbol, has caused many people upset.

“This religiously-aggravated performance appropriated and distorted the Holocaust and was clearly designed to cause distress. It’s shocking that while police act swiftly on less obvious public offencesthis blatant display went unchallenged at the heart of our democracy.”

Labour Against Anti-Semitism has written to Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, asking him to investigate the incident as a potentially religiously-aggravated offence that had “appropriated and distorted the Holocaust” and risked “trivialising the suffering of six million Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution”.

Ms Gallastegui has been arrested previous times over the past two decades, including during a protest for the right to protest in Parliament Square in August 2005.

She previously lived in a tent in Parliament Square for six years after joining the campaign against proposals to change the law to restrict protests in front of the Commons and Lords.

She was interviewed by BBC Woman’s Hour in 2021 as she lived and slept in a 150-year-old tree in Hackney. She was challenging the council’s “reckless” and “irresponsible” plans to fell it to make way for a 600-home development.