UK: Terrorist sentence for Palestine Action activist marks 'dangerous' move against right to protest

In response to Judge Mr Justice Johnson’s announcement to the Court that he would be sentencing the Palestine Action ‘Filton 4’ protesters on the basis that their raid of Elbit Systems had a "terrorist connection", Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:

“The defendants in today’s case were sentenced as terrorists because prosecutors want to make an example of them and set a precedent for how direct action protesters could be treated in the future.

“Criminal damage has never been treated as terrorism within the UK justice system before and it is dangerous to treat them as the same thing. We should all be worried about what this means for other individuals taking direct action in protest of a genocide or any other issue.

“The right to protest is one of the most effective tools we have to hold our leaders to account and today is another step in the ongoing crackdown in this country against it.

“It is completely disproportionate to punish protesters for criminal damage as if they were terrorists, a sentence that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

“The use of terrorism laws against direct action protesters must end.”

Background

Today, the four Palestine Action activists known as ‘the Filton 4’ – Charlotte Head, 29; Samuel Corner, 23; Leona Kamio, 30; and Fatema Rajwani, 21 – were told by Judge Mr Justice Johnson they would be sentenced as having a ‘terrorist connection’ following convictions for criminal damage arising out of their involvement in direct action at the Elbit Systems factory in Filton, near Bristol.

As Amnesty International has set out in a paper on the issue, until recently the UK courts have largely operated an approach to dealing with protests and other forms of direct action with a degree of toleration. Criminal law has always been applied, and in the context of protest acts, such as criminal damage, have been distinguished from ordinary criminality and treated more leniently than ordinary criminality. The approach of toleration, while still applying the criminal law, has been central to meeting the UK’s human rights obligations to act proportionately in its treatment of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.

Amnesty is seriously concerned that resorting to a Section 69 finding in cases of criminal damage committed during direct action would invert this principle and misconstrue activists’ conscientious motivation for their actions, and instead consider them an aggravating factor to justify the use of terrorism sentencing powers.