The article is an account of the trial of six Palestine Action activists who broke into Elbit Systems factory in Filton, Bristol in August 2024. Since I am only able to quote a small section I suggest reading the original article. It has very recently been announced that the six will face a retrial on the charges that the jury was unable to reach a verdict on.
Jordan Devlin and security guard Angelo Volante on CCTV footage (Photo: Court handout)
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The missing footage
Elbit was not even called to give evidence about their apparently unfit-for-purpose security surveillance system. Remember this is a high-tech company that provides sophisticated surveillance systems for border walls, but more than a year after the incident, it came to light during the trial that the map of CCTV cameras given to the defence team had several missing including those in areas of the factory where disputed incidents had taken place.
Testimony from police witnesses, and in particular the CCTV recovery officer working for the police’s National Digital Exploitation Service, revealed for the first time various issues with camera footage, none of which had been in her original written statement. In the afternoon at the start of the trial’s third week when the jury was not in the court, Menon said that the defence had been kept in the dark about these issues, and only by pressing harder during the trial had they finally been given unredacted body-worn footage including the moment security guard Angelo Volante entered the factory wielding a whip.
Another clip showing Volante moving towards someone while holding a sledgehammer triggered a wider request on 18 November, and the defence team were then drip fed around 300 pages of further evidence including email traffic between the police and an anonymised senior Elbit employee known as “Witness Alpha”.
On 2 December, defence barristers were cross-examining a police officer, PC Sarah Grant. Menon asked Grant if Elbit had sole control and access to the CCTV system for two days. She replied yes. He then quoted an email she had sent to “Witness Alpha” in which she wrote: “There’s a huge opportunity for the defence counsel to use the gaps and jumps to their advantage”. Menon then questioned why among the correspondence revealed in the hundreds of pages of new evidence, police appeared to be “chatting with Israel’s largest arms manufacturer about what the defence counsel might do”.
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Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves discuss wasting money including David Lammy spending £1MILLION on private jets.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Protesters rally outside Pentonville Prison in London on January 11, 2026 in support of hunger-striking members of the banned anti-genocide group Palestine Action. (Photo by Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Sally Rooney, Tariq Ali, and George Monbiot are among the signers of a statement of support for the proscribed anti-genocide protesters, who have refused food for over two months.
More than 50 international authors and academics signed a declaration published Monday in support of hunger-striking activists allegedly linked to the banned Palestine Action movement, who are at imminent risk of death after refusing to eat for more than two months.
The brief statement—“We oppose genocide, we support the Palestine Action prisoners”—was signed by prominent figures including historian Tariq Ali; novelist Sally Rooney; former Guantánamo Bay prisoner Moazzam Begg; journalists Owen Jones and George Monbiot; and professors Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Naomi Klein, and Ilan Pappé.
The declaration echoes the message on a placard held by Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg when she was arrested last month in London protesting the imprisonment of people accused of being part of Palestine Action after the nonviolent direct action group was officially declared a terrorist organization in July by the UK government.
Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for supporting Palestine Action, often while simply holding signs. Eight accused Palestine Action activists are awaiting trial for allegedly breaking into and damaging a British military base and a facility run by Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems. The defendants are facing at least 18 months behind bars before trial.
On November 2, a small group of imprisoned activists launched a hunger strike. Three people—Heba Muraisi, Kamran Ahmed, and Lewie Chiaramello—are still striking, despite imminent danger of death.
“She’s dying. She said it: ‘I’m dying,’” Francesca Nadin said of her friend Muraisi—who is on the 71st day of her strike—during a Monday interview with the Guardian.
Nadin said that the 31-year-old’s body is “shutting down.”
“I know mentally she’ll remain strong right to the last moment but she is dying,” she added. “The government, by putting her in prison and denying her all her rights, they’re not just letting her die, they’re actively killing her.”
Ahmed, 28, has been refusing food for 64 days. Doctors have informed him that his heart muscles are shrinking and he is at risk of sudden cardiac arrest.
“He’s skinny. I describe him a bit like a piece of paper,” Shahmina Alam, Ahmed’s sister, toldAl Jazeera last week. “It feels like now every time you see him, it could be the last.”
Chiaramello, 22, has Type 1 diabetes and has been fasting every other day for 44 days.
A fourth person, Umar Khalid, has reportedly resumed his strike following a 13-day pause.
Despite her dire condition, Muraisi is “intent on carrying on until the demands are met,” according to friend Amareen Afzal.
The strikers are demanding immediate bail, an end to censorship of their communications, a fair trial, lifting of the ban on Palestine Action, and closure of Elbit Systems’ UK facilities.
“The hunger strikers’ demands seem reasonable to me,” Monbiot wrote last week. “All these things, I believe, should be happening anyway. And they are of course negotiating positions. Whether all would need to be met for the strike to end cannot be known until the government engages. Its refusal to talk could condemn the strikers to death.”
Standing in stark contrast with the US military’s torturous force-feeding of hunger striking Guantánamo Bay prisoners during the Obama administration, the UK follows recommendations in the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Malta, which advises doctors not to force-feed prisoners who choose to hunger strike and understand the consequences of their actions.
“Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable,” the declaration states.
In 1981, UK authorities allowed 10 imprisoned Irish Republican Army members, including former Member of Parliament Bobby Sands, to starve themselves to death in Northern Ireland. Their deaths occurred after between 46 and 73 days of refusing food.
A group of former hunger strikers from Palestine, Ireland, and Guantánamo on Sunday issued an urgent appeal to the UK government to save the Palestine Action strikers’ lives, and condemning the terrorist designation.
Critics said that the government would be to blame should any of the hunger strikers die.
“The UK is now perilously close to full descent into authoritarian rule,” said professor Peter Hallward, who signed the intellectuals’ declaration. “Ministers won’t even meet with hunger strikers, who are now at death’s door.”
Hallward added that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood “seem perfectly ready to let this country’s most committed and courageous opponents of an ongoing genocide waste away and die.”
Israel’s US-backed war and siege on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza and most of the coastal strip in ruins. Around 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the current cease-fire took effect three months ago. Israeli authorities are still blocking or strictly limiting the entry of critical supplies into Gaza, where 2-month-old infant Mohammed Abu Harbid over the weekend became at least the fourth Palestinian baby to freeze to death since November.
More than a dozen Palestinians—including at least five children—have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza in recent days.
On Monday, a court in Edinburgh held a hearing on a petition filed by human rights campaigner and former diplomat Craig Murray seeking to lift the ban on Palestine Action in Scotland, whose judiciary is independent from the rest of the UK.
“The impact of proscription of Palestine Action has been appalling,” attorney Joanna Cherry told the court. “Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested under the absurd pretence of terrorism.”
“We are dealing with human rights and liberties—some of the most fundamental in our society,” Cherry added. “If people don’t have the right to express their views and assemble to express their views, they can’t really take part in civil society properly and adequately. It’s hard to imagine a more urgent situation.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Defend Our Juries announce the locations of the 20 UK-wide local actions in their Lift The Ban campaign against the ban on Palestine Action and against the UK government’s complicity in genocide.
The actions are intended to restore fundamental rights in relation to protest and freedom of expression in the UK ahead of and during the judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action (25–27 November).
Local police forces are operationally independent of central government so have to make their own choices about how to react to Lift The Ban protests. Police forces have chosen not to arrest sign-holders at previous actions in Derry, Edinburgh, Totnes, Norwich and Kendal – choosing instead to respect their right to protest and to freedom of expression.
Ordinary members of the public will be taking part in acts of dangerous sign-holding at 1pm in the following locations on Tuesday 18 November:
Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth House, 1 Sibbald Walk, EH8 8FT
Caerdydd (Cardiff), Senedd
Oxford, Clarendon Building, OX1 3AZ
Newcastle, Civic Centre
Leeds, Dortmund Square
Aberystwyth, location to be announced
Nottingham, Green Heart (paved area near the new central library)
Northampton, The steps of Guildhall, St Giles’ Square, Northampton, NN1 1DE
Gloucester, Cathedral
Truro, Meet in the square outside front entrance of Truro Cathedral, High Cross
Then again on Saturday 22 in Belfast at The Square between the courts on Chichester Street.
And on Saturday 29 November in these locations:
Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth House
Caerdydd (Cardiff), location to be announced nearer the date
Manchester, location to be announced
Birmingham, Chamberlain Square, B3 3DH (opposite Museum and Art Gallery)
Cambridge, Guildhall, opposite the market: Guildhall Place, Market Hill
Bristol, College Green, BS1 5TJ
Sheffield, Cathedral
Exeter, outside Central Station, Queens Street
Lancaster, outside Lancaster Castle
And (as announced previously) in London at:
The Ministry Of Justice (Thursday 20th)
The Peace Garden in Tavistock Square (Saturday 22nd)
The Home Office (Monday 24th) and
The Royal Courts of Justice (Wednesday 26th)
The action in Belfast on Saturday 22nd November will be the first Lift The Ban action in the city. There have been regular independently-organised sign-holding actions in Derry but no arrests or charges have been brought to date in the north of Ireland. Legal experts say that Police Service Northern Ireland need the proscription “like a hole in the head” and they suspect that PSNI were not consulted on the proscription by the Home Secretary.
Police Scotland have so far made no arrests at Lift The Ban actions in Edinburgh, although they have subsequently arrested and charged a seemingly random ten people from the 85 who took action in September. The Scottish Counter-Terrorism Board CONTEST has concluded that Palestine Action “has not been close to meeting the statutory definition of terrorism.” Earlier this month former diplomat Craig Murray filed a legal challenge against the ban in Scotland meaning there is the potential for a constitutional crisis if Scottish and English courts reach different decisions.
In Cardiff when people sit outside the Senedd building they will do so knowing that at the last Lift The Ban action there in July Welsh police arrested sign-holders under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. They also held people in custody while raiding their houses and testing their food with geiger counters. However the same sitters were subsequently charged only with lesser section 13 offences (maximum penalty of six months in prison).
Leigh Evans, retired Emergency Nurse with extensive experience of working in the West Bank and Gaza, who took part in the Global Flotilla, and who will be taking action in Cardiff said:
“Protest and direct action are prerequisites for democracy in the face of fascism. Direct action is the only thing that has ever been proved to work against oppression and apartheid. Every right we have has been won for us through protest and direct action from the Levellers in the 17th century to the suffragettes in the early 1900s. Direct action and protests give us our human rights.”
Elle Miller, Railway Maintenance Worker, age 43 from Glasgow, explained why she will be taking part in both Edinburgh actions as well as the action in London on 26th:
“In today’s politics, it feels like the only way to influence decisions is to have millions in the bank. Without protest, slavery would still be legal, women couldn’t vote, and same-sex marriage would still be illegal. We know protest works precisely because successive governments are trying to criminalise it. If sitting peacefully with a cardboard sign makes me a terrorist, then I hope my great-grandchildren will be as proud of me as relatives of the suffragettes are today.
“The decision to proscribe Palestine Action was driven by corporate interests profiting from arms sales to those committing atrocities in Palestine and beyond. It is not illegal to challenge those interests or to campaign to change unjust laws. The Scottish Government has recognised the genocide in Palestine – so why are Police Scotland arresting peaceful protesters? Who do they serve: the UK Government, or the people of Scotland who oppose this ban?”
Oliver Baines OBE, 74, a farmer and retired charity CEO from Grampound Road who will be among those holding signs in Truro on the 18th, said:
“Devon and Cornwall Police pride themselves on their community policing, so a group of local residents sitting in silent vigil opposing genocide was always going to create a dilemma for them. When eight were arrested in July, the police were courteous and, in many cases, clearly uncomfortable. Their subsequent change of policy was typified by one officer who described the October protest as ‘lovely and peaceful’.
“Our argument was never with the police but with the UK Government, with its shameful attack on our civil liberties, and with its appalling record of complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Equating solidarity with Palestine and opposition to genocide with being a terrorist is a gross insult to all peace-loving people.”
LIFT THE BAN CAMPAIGN
So far over 2,000 people have been arrested under terrorism legislation for taking part in these now famous actions in which people sit silently holding handwritten cardboard signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Around 170 of these have so far been charged with section 13 offences under the Terrorism Act 2000, offences which carry a maximum six month prison sentence.
The demands of the Lift The campaign are firstly to lift the ban on Palestine Action and secondly to name the ongoing Israeli assault on the Palestinian people as a genocide and comply with the resulting legal obligations, including by ending all military trade and other military cooperation with Israel.
At the Court Of Appeal ruling on 15 October, Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori won two more grounds for her Judicial Review at the same time as the government lost their attempt to block the legal challenge of the ban, making
Last month the UN issued its draft report Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime detailing the complicity of states including the UK in the destruction of Gaza. Amongst other things, the UK continued to supply arms including components for F-35 stealth bombers, undertook daily surveillance flights over Gaza for Israel, maintained normal trade relations, and allowed Israel to undertake international crimes with impunity.
The genocide continues to unfold in Gaza. Since October 11, the first full day of the ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 245 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 627. Israel continues to attack Gaza, with at least three airstrikes on Wednesday. The UN says Israel is blocking vaccines and baby bottles. More than 1,500 buildings beyond the “yellow line” have been destroyed. And in the West Bank yesterday settlers set fire to vehicles, including dairy trucks.
CHORUS OF CRITICISM
This week the government’s proscription of Palestine Action has come under fire yet again from expert bodies both in the UK and internationally with the release of three separate reports. On Tuesday a panel of experts including a former MI6 director said terrorism laws needed rewriting as they had become too broad to keep the country safe, hitting out at the ‘serious property damage’ clause” which has resulted in a nonviolent domestic direct action group being designated as terrorists for the first time.
Later that same day it was revealed that an advisory body had told ministers that banning Palestine Action could backfire by inadvertently raising the group’s public profile, becoming “a flashpoint for significant controversy and criticism” of the government, heightening Muslim-Jewish community tensions, and being seen as evidence of bias towards Israel.
28 prisoners are currently being held in UK prisons without trial for allegedly taking part in actions claimed by Palestine action. They are known as the Filton 24 and the Brize Norton Five. Most will be held for two years without trial – exceeding the six month pre-trial custody limit – because the Crown Prosecution Service is claiming there is a “terrorist connection” on the basis of criminal damage. However no charges have been brought under the Terrorism Act against these prisoners and the actions took place before Palestine Action was proscribed by the government.
Six of these prisoners are now on a rolling hunger strike. The hunger strike started on Saturday 2nd November – Balfour Day – with two people after the Home Secretary failed to respond to their demands including immediate bail, access to documents necessary for the right to a fair trial and the de-proscription of Palestine Action. The strike is “rolling” because more people continue to join the strike as their demands remain unmet. The conditions of their detention have been criticised by UN experts in a letter to the UK government.
In August of this year T Hoxa of the Filton 24 went on hunger strike for 28 days, eventually winning most of her demands. According to Prisoners For Palestine, most of the 33 activists are expected to join the strike in coming weeks, in what could become the largest coordinated prisoners’ hunger strike since the 1981 Irish hunger strike led by Bobby Sands. For more information on the hunger strikers see Prisoners for Palestine.
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
PROTESTS in 18 towns and cities and Britain’s biggest hunger strike since the Troubles were announced today amid intensifying calls to reform Britain’s repressive terror laws behind the ban on Palestine Action.
Organisers said around 1,500 people could take part in the demonstrations next month, while others will begin rolling hunger strikes this Sunday.
More than 2,000 people have been arrested for allegedly supporting Palestine Action during mass events where protesters held placards saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” after it was proscribed as a terrorist group in July.
Suspects face up to two years in jail without charge.
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The demonstrations come ahead of a legal hearing against former home secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to proscribe the group under anti-terror laws.
Defend Our Juries spokesman Dr Clive Dolphin said: “This is about here in the UK, people having the right to protest, the right to speak up to government when they think the government has got something wrong, and fundamentally this is about the fact that the British people oppose genocide.
“They do not want to be complicit in war crimes. They do not want to see people starved to death in an artificial famine. British people oppose genocide.”
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
CAMPAIGNERS encased statues of prominent social justice figures in prison bars today to challenge laws that criminalise protest.
Greenpeace activists imprisoned statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett outside Westminster, to highlight how they would fall foul of the government’s anti-protest laws if they were protesting today.
A new analysis by the group found that out of all the arrests made under the Terrorism Act since it came into force 24 years ago, almost half (2,100 out of 4,322) occurred in the last four months, predominately targeting people protesting the ban on Palestine Action.
Since the group was proscribed on July 5, police have carried out mass arrests of activists silently holding signs against the ban.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: “Calling peaceful protesters ‘terrorists’ is one of the most blatantly ridiculous and dangerous things this government has done.
“Nelson Mandela was jailed for fighting apartheid, this lot would’ve called him a national security threat. When we criminalise protest, we don’t just attack activists. We attack democracy itself.”
