West Midlands Police (WMP) have been ordered to explain their decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a game against Aston Villa last month following claims that the ban was justified on the basis of “false intelligence”.
In a rare use of its powers, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has threatened a full investigation over concerns that the decision may have threatened public confidence in the police.
The order refers to a WMP dossier containing inaccurate information that Maccabi fans visiting Amsterdam for an Ajax game last year threw people into a canal, that 200 were “linked” to the IDF, and that 5,000 officers had been deployed to respond.
The dossier, over which West Midlands chief constable Craig Guilford is facing calls to resign, also referred to a fictitious match between Maccabi and West Ham, a claim so erroneous that MPs questioned whether it had been generated as a result of an “artificial intelligence hallucination”.
On Friday West Suffolk MP Nick Timothy confirmed in a post on X that West Midlands Police had been recalled to face the Home Affairs Select Committee on 6 January, which he added is “without precedent for a chief constable”.
Rachel Watson, director of the IOPC, said that “while the usual route for [us] to deal with a complaint … is via a referral from a police force, given the sensitivities in this matter, I am prepared to consider whether we ought to use our power of initiative”.
If the IOPC carries out a full inquiry, typically employed in cases where someone has died or been severely injured by police, it could order West Midlands to instigate disciplinary proceedings against its own officers or pass any evidence of criminal offences — such as misconduct in public office — to the Crown Prosecution Service.
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