00:00West Midlands police have defended their decision to ban Israeli football fans from attending a European match in Birmingham.
00:07Senior officers appeared before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 6 January following criticism of the move to prevent Maccabi Talibiv supporters from attending the Europa League fixture against Aston Villa last November.
00:21MPs questioned whether police were looking for reasons to justify the ban after concerns were raised about the intelligence used to assess the risk.
00:30Well that's absolutely not the case. I'm really sorry if it comes across in that way. That was absolutely not the case.
00:38The information, the intelligence that we received, that we documented and we've shared absolutely all of that with HMICFRS very, very recently
00:48was all gone through.
00:52Following the hearing police said the match had been classed as high risk by Birmingham's Safety Advisory Group
00:57which includes the council, police and emergency services.
01:01Officers pointed to disorder and hate crimes linked to previous matches involving the team elsewhere in Europe
01:08and said intelligence suggested supporters could have been targeted if allowed to attend.
01:13However, MPs also raised concerns about how some information was presented ahead of the decision
01:19including a letter from Dutch police that appeared to challenge parts of the assessment.
01:24The committee says it will now gather further evidence before publishing its conclusions.
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