Academic says he has been barred from UK over event with Palestine Action founder

A Swedish climate academic says he has been barred from entering the UK because he was due to speak on a panel with a co-founder of Palestine Action.

Andreas Malm told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had received a letter from the Home Office notifying him that his presence was "not conducive to the public good", with no further details given.

He said he could not "see any other explanation" for being denied entry than his scheduled appearance with Huda Ammori, a founder of the group, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.

The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases.

Malm is a senior lecturer in human ecology at Sweden's Lund University, whose work includes the 2021 book How to Blow up a Pipeline and 2025's The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth.

He said he had asked the Home Office to explain its decision, but could not see a reason beyond the upcoming talk in London with Ammori organised by the left-wing magazine Tribune - calling the move a "severe restriction on the free exchange of ideas".

Malm said he was not a member of Palestine Action, had never publicly endorsed it, nor had he given it any financial support.

"The only link to Palestine Action is her as a person," he said, criticising the UK government for ascribing "guilt by association".

The academic acknowledged that he had previously described the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel - in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage - as "fundamentally an act of liberation".

Malm said it was possible that these remarks, during a December 2023 talk in which he also condemned the "deplorable" killing of civilians in the cross-border attack, had been the reason for the Home Office's decision.

But he argued that these views had been in the public realm for a long time, including when he was last allowed into the UK to deliver a talk in May.

"I don't expect the British state to agree with me on Palestine or climate or anything. What I expect the British state to do is to continue to let me enter the country and to discuss with colleagues, with people who disagree with me - as I have done for years."