London police make arrest over removal of Banksy art

A man was arrested on Saturday in connection with the removal of a street sign featuring work by the artist Banksy, the Metropolitan Police of London said. The artwork, a red stop sign with three military drones, had been widely interpreted as a criticism of Israel’s bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Two men, one carrying bolt cutters, took down the sign in Peckham, a district in southeast London, shortly after Banksy unveiled it in a social media post Friday. Bystanders recorded video of the men before one took off running with the sign. The motive for the removal was not immediately clear.

The Metropolitan Police said a man in his 20s had been arrested and taken into custody Saturday on suspicion of theft and criminal damage in connection with the incident.

“Our local authority partners were informed at the time and have since replaced the road sign to avoid endangering road users,” a representative for the Metropolitan Police said Saturday.

While the Banksy artwork in Peckham did not include any explicit reference to the war in Gaza — which began with a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel — his stencils, wall paintings and graffiti often have social and political undertones. In 2015, Banksy visited Gaza, where he created murals on rubble to highlight the destruction left from a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas.

He has also opened the Walled Off Hotel, a nine-room guesthouse in the West Bank city of Bethlehem whose windows overlook the barrier that separates the territory from Israel. The hotel announced in October, after Hamas’ attack, that it would close “for the time being.”

The London episode was hardly the first time that street art by Banksy was removed. A mural painted on the emergency exit door of the Bataclan theater in Paris was stolen in 2019.

Art by Banksy, who has gained worldwide fame while remaining anonymous, has been auctioned for thousands if not millions of dollars over the years, although he has discouraged people from buying street art that was not meant for sale.

“It’s a shame it’s been taken away because it belongs to all of us,” Jasmine Ali, a city councilor in Southwark, the borough of London that includes Peckham, said Friday on social media.

“We’d like it back so that everyone in the community can enjoy it,” Ali added.