Sentencing “terrorists”.

The Filton Four, Palestine Action activists who smashed up drones and other equipment at an Israeli arms manufacturer’s UK factory, have been sentenced as terrorists after the judge ruled that there was a “terrorist connection” to their offending.

Charlotte Head, 30, and Leona Kamio, 30, were each jailed for five years and Fatema Rajwani, 21, was sentenced to four years and 8 months for criminal damage in relation to a 2024 break-in at the Elbit Systems UK site in Gloucestershire. Samuel Corner, 23, who was additionally convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent for striking Sgt Kate Evans with a sledgehammer, was sentenced to seven years and eight months. Each will also spend an additional year on licence and be subject to 15 years of terrorist notification requirements.

Approximately 500 protesters gathered outside Woolwich crown court in south-east London, including some holding placards that read “Saving lives is not terrorism. I support Palestine Action”. More than 100 people were arrested for allegedly supporting Palestine Action, which remains proscribed under the Terrorism Act pending the court of appeal’s judgment on Monday on the lawfulness of the ban.

So that’s another 100 people who could be facing charges. Someone pointed out that under the Palestine Action proscription naming them as terrorists, the suffragettes would have been terrorists, as would the women who surrounded Greenham Common. 

Here’s something I “borrowed” from social media:

“The 1960s apartheid govt of South Africa labelled the ANC as terrorists and used a compliant judiciary to suppress their activists and supporters. Today's British govt uses the same tactics against Palestine Action and its supporters.

Here's a photo of Judge Quartus de Wet who sentenced Nelson Mandela to life in prison, and one of Judge Jeremy Johnson who yesterday sentenced four Palestine Action activists as terrorists, even though they were never charged with terrorism, because such a charge would have been thrown out by every jury in the land.

Johnson would have fitted in very well in South Africa's apartheid regime.”

Here’s Jonathan Cook’s comment on the sentencing: 

“There are lots of people drinking the security services Kool Aid over the sentencing of the Filton Four.

They believe the judge was right to overturn the jury's decision to convict four anti-genocide activists of criminal damage and make it a terrorism offence instead, overturning centuries of legal precedent.

Why? Because, they claim, the four activists broke / smashed / shattered a police woman's spine.

But that obviously can't be the explanation because three of the activists had nothing to do with that incident and yet they were convicted as terrorists by the judge anyway.

Even Samuel Corner, the activist who was convicted over this incident (which left the police woman with a minor fracture, according to the medical authorities who testified), shouldn't have been sentenced as a terrorist for it because that is not what the jury, which heard the actual evidence, decided.

The jury convicted Samuel Corner of grievous bodily harm *without intent*. The prosecution had charged him with GBH *with intent* because they needed that as his conviction to build a public mood in support of the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

If Corner could be presented as having entered Israel's Elbit weapons factory with intent to commit violence, then the implication would be that the other activists were in on that plan – a conspiracy – and the government would be off the hook of violating fundamental legal norms by proscribing Palestine Action.

By stripping out intent, the jury pulled the rug from under the government's feet.

Judge Johnson's task was put the rug firmly back in place by riding roughshod over the jury's decision and sentencing them as terrorists anyway. 

The timing couldn't be more convenient. On Monday, the Appeal Court will be deciding on the government's appeal against the High Court declaring its proscription of Palestine Action unlawful.

If you're peddling the "But they smashed the back of a police woman" line you've been fed by the Daily Mail and BBC, it's because that is exactly what the government needs you spouting as it upends our age-old rights to jury trials, as it stamps out an honourable tradition of direct action dating back to the Suffragettes and before, and as it gives itself cover for continuing complicity in a genocide.”

That’s all.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!