UK Coroner to Name IDF Colonel as Interested Person in Deaths of Three British Aid Workers Killed by Israeli Drone Strikes

A pre-inquest review opened Monday at Avon Coroner's Court in Bristol into the deaths of three British citizens killed while working as security consultants for World Central Kitchen in Gaza.

James "Jim" Henderson, 33, James Kirby, 47, and John Chapman, 57, were among seven aid workers killed on 1 April 2024 when Israeli drones struck their convoy three times in roughly four-minute intervals as it traveled toward Rafah. The colonel who ordered the strike, Nochi Mendel, has said he is "not sorry," and the Israeli military has announced it will not pursue criminal charges over the killings.

The coroner told the families she will include Mendel, the IDF, and the Israeli government as interested persons in the inquest. Lawyers for the families used the hearing to demand a full investigation into the IDF's actions, its targeting and deconfliction policies, and the munitions used, arguing the inquest should determine whether the aid workers were unlawfully killed.

The families are also pushing to have Britain's Ministry of Defence named an interested person, over unanswered questions about UK intelligence sharing with Israel. Declassified UK has previously reported that a British surveillance aircraft flew over Gaza shortly before the attack, and that the Ministry of Defence holds footage from that flight but has refused to release it or disclose the plane's flight path.

"There is no other independent investigation into James' death. This inquest is all we have, and we are going to see it through," the Kirby family said outside the court.

The family added that they are "asking the Government to give the Coroner whatever it has, and to keep pressing Israel for the drone footage and the other evidence," and said that if Israel refuses, "people should be told that."

An Australian government investigation, drawing on firsthand accounts, found that the convoy had escorted aid trucks earlier that evening before locally contracted, some armed, guards boarded the vehicles. The IDF has said it interpreted their presence as a Hamas hijacking, despite the convoy continuing its planned route and unloading aid at a WCK warehouse roughly three miles away. The IDF later said it "mistakenly believed" the departing vehicles carried Hamas operatives, with one account suggesting a bag placed in a WCK vehicle was mistaken for a weapon.

Lawyers for the Henderson family told the court in written submissions that this account is "contradicted by all of the available evidence," and that when the strikes were launched the convoy was nowhere near Israeli troops and posed no reasonable threat.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak told Benjamin Netanyahu at the time he was "appalled," and current Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has since called the killings "cold-blooded." Neither statement has translated into an independent UK or Israeli criminal inquiry, leaving the coroner's court as the only formal venue examining the deaths of the three British citizens.