{"id":1015383,"date":"2026-08-21T17:59:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1015383\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T17:59:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:59:17","slug":"palestine-action-activists-will-not-be-sentenced-as-terrorists-judge-rules-courts-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1015383\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestine Action activists will not be sentenced as terrorists, judge rules | Courts News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preston, United Kingdom \u2013<\/strong> Five Palestine Action activists in the United Kingdom will not be sentenced under terrorism laws, a judge has ruled.<\/p>\n

Brendon O\u2019Hagan, 28, Amanda Kelly, 31, Hmeera Atiqnisar, 31, Mohammed Malik, 28, and Alma Yaniv, 70, were convicted in June of causing damage worth 212,000 pounds ($290,000) to a branch of Barclays bank in the town of Burnley in Lancashire in August 2024.<\/p>\n

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The activists were protesting against the bank\u2019s shareholdings in the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.<\/p>\n

On Friday at Preston Crown Court, as Judge Robert Altham announced his ruling, scores of their supporters gathered outside erupted into cheers and pro-Palestine chants.<\/p>\n

Malik\u2019s mother, Dove Malik, told Al Jazeera, \u201cIt\u2019s a victory for us, it\u2019s a victory for Palestine, it\u2019s a victory for protesting \u2026 We are on the right side of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a joint statement, the activists said they were \u201cextremely relieved that the court has seen sense and decided not to sentence us as terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should never have been an option,\u201d they said. \u201cWe were on trial for charges of criminal damage, for damaging some windows and spraying red paint on a Barclays branch. At no point during the trial were we, or the jury, informed that, if convicted, we could face being sentenced as terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The five are due to be sentenced on September 4.<\/p>\n

\"Pro-PalestinePro-Palestine activists who vandalised a branch of Barclays in northern England in August 2024 over its investment in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems could have faced terrorism sentences [Courtesy of Defend Our Juries]<\/p>\n

At the time of their verdicts, Palestine Action had not been proscribed<\/a> as a terrorist group. Neither the defendants nor the jury were aware that terrorism charges might be involved.<\/p>\n

However, following the verdicts, trial judge Philip Parry notified the defendants\u2019 legal team that he intended to consider whether the offence carried a \u201cterrorist connection\u201d.<\/p>\n

Parry made a similar move after circulating a ruling from a case in June, during which four Palestine Action activists convicted of criminal damage at Elbit Systems\u2019 Filton site near Bristol were sentenced as terrorists nearly two years after their protest at Woolwich Crown Court in London.<\/p>\n

\"ProtestersProtesters support the pro-Palestine activists convicted of criminal damage [Simon Speakman Cordall\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

Leading criminal lawyer Raj Chada, of the firm Hodge Jones & Allen, which has defended a number of Palestine Action activists, said \u201cterrorist connection\u201d laws date back years, but only appear to have been applied recently and solely in Palestine Action cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, in our experience, using the law like this is very, very unusual and appears to be being used to target Palestine Action activists whose offence predates the banning of the group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the best of our knowledge, the only time this law was used in relation to direct action protest groups was against those convicted at Filton,\u201d said Chada, outlining laws used by prosecutors to target the offence rather than the individual or group that had carried it out.<\/p>\n

According to the rights group Defend our Juries, more than 3,500 people \u2013 many over the age of 60 \u2013 have been arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action after it was proscribed by politicians in July 2025, placing it on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).<\/p>\n

Many of these arrests have arisen through repeated mass sit-ins in central London\u2019s Parliament Square, where protesters held signs reading, \u201cI oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rights groups have long decried the ban on Palestine Action as an illiberal overreach by the government, calling on the ruling Labour Party to lift it.<\/p>\n

Responding to Friday\u2019s ruling, Kerry Moscogiuri, head of Amnesty International UK said, \u201cWe now need to see the proscription against Palestine Action lifted and an end to the misuse of sweeping counter terror powers against direct action protestors. The government should begin the process of reversing the years of attacks on our right to protest, one of the most effective tools we have to hold our leaders to account.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople protest outside the Preston court in support of the five activists [Simon Speakman Cordall\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preston, United Kingdom \u2013 Five Palestine Action activists in the United Kingdom will not be sentenced under terrorism…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1015384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[356,440,99,13191,50,7237,376],"class_list":["post-1015383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-courts","tag-europe","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-news","tag-protests","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117134806024633892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1015384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}