West Midlands Police has admitted it overstated the evidence used to make the decision to ban Israeli fans from a match in Birmingham. Craig Guildford, its former chief constable, retired earlier this month after damning criticism of the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the Europa League match against Aston Villa, last November. In newly released documents, the force also said we did not engage early enough with the local Jewish community, and indicated there was now a ban on AI use after its evidence included a match that did not take place. Furthermore, it said its operations would have lasted four days, involved multiple forces, and cost more than £5m, if 2,500 away fans had attended. The documents were released ahead of a public meeting on Tuesday, at which Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands, Simon Foster, will discuss at his accountability and governance board, the decision to ban the Maccabi fans.

When a police force is supposed to seek the truth and uphold the law, what happens when the evidence they present to officials and the public is, as Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood put it, exaggerated or untrue? The police inspectorate has concluded the leaders of West Midlands Police fell foul of confirmation bias. In simple terms, that means senior officers had already reached a decision and were looking for intelligence to justify it. The list of errors and inaccuracies set out in an independent review of the decision-making that led to fans of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv being banned from attending a fixture at Villa Park in November have been described by Mahmood as damning. They include: A report of a football match in an intelligence report produced using AI which never happened; a twice-repeated denial by senior police leaders to MPs that AI had not been relied on to produce the inaccurate report; the claim that local Jewish groups had been consulted on the move when they had not been; inaccurately presenting evidence from Dutch police reports from a previous fixture involving the club.