As was documented here in November 2023 and in January 2025, the BBC’s previous coverage of the release of Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for hostages seized on October 7th 2023 promoted redundant parity between Israeli hostages and Palestinian terrorists and sidestepped the topics of the crimes committed by those Palestinian prisoners and their links to terrorist organisations.
It therefore did not come as much of a surprise to find the corporation adopting the same editorial stance in its coverage of the release of the remaining living hostages on October 13th 2025.
Examples included the BBC’s chief political correspondent referring to “the hostage exchange”, an interview by Lucy Williamson with the sister of a convicted terrorist that failed to make any mention made of his crimes or the four people murdered in that suicide bombing and promotion of the false claim that “a large substantial number of the hostages being released are actually military officers”. BBC audiences also saw the owner of a London restaurant given a platform from which to promote the ‘genocide’ libel and the same falsehood was also promoted to BBC Radio 4 listeners, along with the narrative of ‘colonisation’.
BBC News website coverage of the part of the story relating to the release of Palestinian prisoners included a filmed report by Barbara Plett Usher who – perhaps unsurprisingly given her past tears for Yasser Arafat – told viewers that: [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
“Only about a hundred of them are being released to the West Bank – that’s these prisoners here. Their families are gathered at the Ramallah Cultural Centre, which is where we are, to greet them when they see the prisoners released. Ahm…that is not only welcoming back their friends and brothers but it’s…it’s part of their cause for the Palestinian people. And you know, again, as we said, the Israelis see some of these people as terrorists.”
Plett Usher of course had nothing to tell her viewers about the terror offences committed by many of those released prisoners.
A written report that appeared on the BBC News website under the updated headline “What happens next in Gaza ceasefire plan after hostage release?” includes a sub-section headed “Who are the Palestinian prisoners and detainees who have been released?” which actually fails to provide readers with any relevant information on that topic.
Plett Usher’s filmed report was also promoted in two articles by Tom Bennett – “Palestinians celebrate return of detainees freed by Israel” and “Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees freed as Trump hails ‘historic dawn’ in Middle East” – which appeared on the BBC News website on October 13th.
The first of those reports opens as follows:
“Hundreds of freed Palestinian prisoners and detainees have been welcomed with tears and screams of joy as they were released by Israel to be reunited with their families in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The release involved about 250 prisoners who had been convicted of crimes including murder and deadly attacks against Israelis – and about 1,700 detainees from Gaza who had been held by Israel without charge.”
It goes on:
“”He is ready to embrace freedom,” said Amro Abdullah, 24, who was waiting for his cousin Rashid Omar, 48, who was arrested in July 2005 and sentenced to life in prison by an Israeli court after being found guilty of murder and other crimes.”
Bennett did not bother to inform his readers that Rashid Mahmoud Omar was a member of a Fatah terror cell and was convicted – among other things – of murdering a Palestinian.
The BBC practice of airbrushing the crimes of convicted terrorists and their affiliations with proscribed organisations goes back well over a decade. Once again we see that coverage of the latest release of Palestinian prisoners fails to provide such relevant information and of course the voices of the people directly affected by those crimes – be they survivors or bereaved family members – are nowhere to be found at the BBC.
