Original article by Anita Mureithi at OpenDemocracy shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Activists say their actions in 2020 and 2021 were lawfully justified amid Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians
Jurors have begun deliberations in the trial of the ‘Elbit eight’, a group of activists with Palestine Action accused of offences relating to the shutdown of UK operations by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms producer.
The eight have been on trial for four weeks at Snaresbrook Crown Court in north-east London. They do not deny the charges of burglary, criminal damage, encouraging offences of criminal damage, possessing articles with intent to cause criminal damage, and threatening to damage property belonging to Jones Lang LaSalle – a company that provides services in relation to one of Elbit’s UK sites – but they have argued that they were lawfully justified in their actions.
Over the past month, jurors have heard how the activists, in the years 2020 to 2021, deployed tactics such as rooftop occupations, window smashing, and spray painting to force Elbit out of the UK and cease the production of lethal weapons used against Palestinian civilians.
Though the prosecution has described their actions as “wanton criminality”, defence barristers have placed great emphasis on the fact that the defendants acted under the belief that if decision-makers at Elbit UK, UAV Systems and Jones Lang LaSalle understood the true extent of the atrocities committed using Elbit manufactured systems, then they would have consented to their actions.
Richard Barnard, Huda Ammori, Robin Refualu, Genevieve Scherer, Milly Arnott, Caroline Brouard, Jocelyn Cooney and Nicola Deane are charged in various combinations on 13 counts relating to a series of incidents in London, Kent, Oldham and Staffordshire.
As barristers for each of the defendants delivered their closing speeches on Tuesday, a number of them reminded jurors that many historical rights movements were once vilified – including the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the civil rights movement in the US.
Barnard’s lawyer said: “It’s no good if in a few weeks’ or months’ time, if you’re pushing your trolley around Tesco, and you think: ‘Oh, I’m not sure we did get that right.’ That’s the heavy responsibility you have.”
He added: “People are allowed, in the free society that you represent as jurors, to hold strong beliefs. Some hold them more strongly than others. Not many would don an adult nappy [a reference to protests that saw activists stay in place for long periods of time]. It takes a certain type of person to do that. A certain strength of belief.
“But these people are important. [They] bring issues perhaps that most of us are content to read about or listen to from the comfort of our own homes.
“Times change, opinions change, and sometimes it takes others to bring matters to our attention which change our opinion. It’s almost laughable to think that women once didn’t have the right to vote.”
All defendants except Scherer and Cooney are charged with at least one count of criminal damage, while all except Brouard, Cooney and Deane are charged with at least one count of burglary. Cooney is charged only with encouraging offences of criminal damage and possessing articles with intent to cause criminal damage.
Original article by Anita Mureithi at OpenDemocracy shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.