A group of Wales supporters were aggressively manhandled out of Cardiff City Stadium by the police during Sunday’s Euro 2016 qualifier between Wales and Israel for waving a Palestinian flag.

The group were then followed by a counter-terrorism unit until they were a “safe distance” away from Cardiff City Stadium.

Stadium officials had made the conscious decision last week to view the Palestinian flag as an offensive and political banner, despite the fact that this wasn’t in the Uefa regulations.

Janie Mac was on the peaceful pro-Palestine demo prior to the game and was part of the group who were aggressively ejected from the stadium.

Mac told the Star: “When I turned up they searched everybody, nobody was allowed to take anything in, no bars were open. It was quite oppressive in there.

“I had been at the demo and when I was sitting in the stand I was being filmed, it had been made aware that I was there.

“When they came to remove us the police were involved and we got ejected from the stadium and the counter-terrorism unit followed us until we were a good distance away from the stadium.

“There were two of us responsible for the flag episode but they decided to chuck four of us out.

“They manhandled the man that was in front of me, blocking me and saying it was because we were flying the flag.

“We said OK, you’ve told us and we won’t do it again. Nowhere in the stadium saying no flags.

“They physically manhandled me out of the stadium and when we were downstairs they wanted our details which we refused to give them.”

On their removal, they were told the reason for their ejection was the Palestinian flag was deemed racist intimidation of Israel supporters inside the stadium and even threatened to arrest them on those grounds.

A counter-terrorist unit was then tasked with ensuring they didn’t loiter around the stadium and followed them until they were well away from the premises.

“They told us it was a level of racist intimidation towards the Israeli fans and threatened to arrest us, even though we weren’t that close to them,” Mac added.

“If you can class a flag as racism then you have to class the Israeli flag as racist.

“We were asking the counter-terrorism unit why they were following us and didn’t they have better things to do.

“Their response was that they were just doing their job.

“Everyone keeps saying football and politics shouldn’t mix and my response to that is that Fifa recognised Palestine’s football team in 1998 yet Israel has continuously hindered its attempts.”