The BBC has placed an Algerian-born former illegal immigrant, who served time in prison for immigration deception and publicly defended Hamas rocket attacks as legitimate resistance, in a senior position overseeing its use of artificial intelligence (AI). The revelation comes amid growing scrutiny of the backgrounds and political sympathies of those employed by Britain’s publicly funded institutions, as pro-Palestinian activism has become increasingly influential.
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Hicham Yezza, the BBC’s Principal Data Scientist for Responsible AI, was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2009 after falsely claiming he had permission to remain in Britain. His visa had expired in 2003, but he continued living in the country as an illegal immigrant for more than five years, subsequently deceiving immigration authorities about his status.
The sentencing judge described Yezza’s actions as a deliberate and prolonged manipulation of Britain’s immigration controls.
Despite his criminal history, Yezza avoided deportation, successfully appealed against removal in 2010, and subsequently obtained British citizenship. He joined BBC Monitoring in 2021 before assuming his current AI position in July 2025. The broadcaster now employs him to help determine how AI systems should handle news and information, including the development of benchmarks for assessing AI performance in public-service media.
Immigration Offender to BBC AI Adviser.
Yezza’s immigration conviction was not his first encounter with British authorities. In 2008, police arrested him after discovering an al-Qaeda training manual on his computer at the University of Nottingham. The document had been sent to him by a postgraduate researcher studying Islamist terrorism. Both men were later released without terrorism charges. However, Yezza’s subsequent political statements have raised additional questions about his suitability for a role at a broadcaster legally obliged to maintain impartiality.
Yezza described Israel in 2018 as an apartheid state established through ethnic cleansing. In 2021, he characterized Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel as acts of Palestinian resistance. Yezza also founded the pro-Palestinian publication Ceasefire, which he edited before joining the BBC.
The broadcaster has defended his employment, claiming that his prior activities were unrelated to his work at the corporation and that he had not violated its social media policies while employed there. While this may be true, Yezza’s background is causing concern amid widespread instances of pro-Palestine bias at the BBC.
The BBC Has Fired Others For Challenging Its Ideology.
The broadcaster has previously disciplined employees over views that seem to counter its woke left ideology, including criticism of its coverage of Hamas and opposition to gender-neutral language.
In 2024, veteran BBC Radio Lancashire journalist Sean McGinty was dismissed following disputes involving his criticism of the broadcaster’s Israel-Hamas coverage and comments on transgender issues. McGinty, who had worked for the corporation for more than two decades, subsequently lost an employment tribunal case. The BBC cited misconduct and breaches of editorial policies.
Meanwhile, BBC News presenter Martine Croxall was found to have breached impartiality guidelines after visibly pulling a face while reading the phrase “pregnant people” during a 2025 broadcast. The BBC upheld complaints, ruling that her reaction suggested a personal opinion on a controversial issue, heedless of the fact that “pregnant people” is itself an ideologically loaded term.
Britain’s Public Institutions Have Faced Similar Scandals.
The BBC controversy is not the first time a British public institution has faced criticism over employing individuals with serious criminal backgrounds. In 2017, London’s Southwark Council admitted that it had employed a woman previously convicted under the Terrorism Act.
The woman, identified as Ms. Girma, worked as a customer service officer despite her prior conviction. According to the council’s official statement, she had initially disclosed a conviction without specifying its nature, and the authority did not bother to investigate it any further.
Her employment was terminated when the full details emerged. The council acknowledged failures in its recruitment procedures and commissioned further scrutiny of its vetting arrangements.
British Charities Are Also Being Infiltrated.
Britain’s charitable sector has also faced serious questions about its ability to prevent extremist activity. A Charity Commission investigation into Brighton Mosque and Muslim Community Centre uncovered major failures after a former trustee delivered a speech encouraging violent jihad at the mosque in November 2020.
The former trustee, who had previously served as the mosque’s imam, was convicted of encouraging terrorism in April 2022 and received a custodial sentence. The regulator found that trustees had failed to protect the charity from extremist abuse despite being aware of the risks associated with the individual.
The Charity Commission subsequently intervened, appointing new trustees and disqualifying former trustee Dr. Karim Aboutayab for four years and six months over separate governance failures.
The case revealed how inadequate oversight can enable extremist activity within organizations operating under Britain’s regulated charitable framework. Unlike Yezza, whose terrorism-related arrest resulted in no charges, the Brighton case involved a criminal conviction for encouraging terrorism.
Hamas-Support Is Infecting Britain’s Establishment Parties.
Controversies involving rhetoric sympathetic to Hamas and Islamist extremism have also reached Britain’s mainstream political parties.
In October 2024, Liberal Democrat councilor Leena Sarah Farhat was suspended after sharing a social media post that appeared to celebrate Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel. Farhat, who had also stood as a parliamentary candidate, reposted a message praising the attacks as an anti-colonial uprising. She subsequently apologized, describing her decision to share the message as a mistake.
The Labour Party faced a separate scandal during the February 2024 Rochdale by-election when its candidate, Azhar Ali, claimed Israel had deliberately allowed the October 7 attacks to provide justification for invading Gaza. Labour initially defended Ali before withdrawing its support following additional revelations about his comments concerning Jewish media figures.
This is incredible.
An Algerian Hamas supporter who became an illegal overstayer in Britain, lied to immigration officers about it, and went to prison for it, is now in a senior role at the BBC.
Because the Tories and Labour failed to deport him.
Hicham Yezza has a long record…
— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) October 20, 2026
Britain’s Institutions Are Not Unbiased.
The BBC’s decision to employ Yezza reveals that the broadcaster will not only tolerate but will also defend employees with immigration fraud convictions and historic support for the actions of terrorist groups, if they are on board with the BBC’s leftist ideology.
Those who have spoken out about leftist ideologies have been disciplined or even fired in recent years, showing that the broadcaster is hardly impartial, despite its own claims to the contrary.
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