Ellie Kamio and her mother Emma. (Photo: Supplied)
Exclusive: We spoke to Ellie Kamio, one of the first people in British history to be sentenced as a terrorist for property damage
“Other than hexing the man, I really wasn’t surprised”.
This is how Leona Kamio, known as Ellie, describes what was going through her mind when a judge announced she would be sentenced as a terrorist alongside three co-defendants earlier this month.
Kamio, a 30-year-old nursery teacher, had been convicted of criminal damage in connection with a Palestine Action raid on an Israeli arms firm in Filton, Bristol, in August 2024.
The jury that tried her had not been informed that any convictions could later carry a “terrorism connection”, she tells Declassified from Bronzefield prison in her first interview since being convicted.
During that trial, the defendants were also not allowed to explain why they targeted Elbit Systems or even say the word “genocide”, stripping the action of all context.
Kamio and her three co-defendants, Charlotte Head, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, and Samuel Corner, have now been sentenced to a combined total of more than 25 years in prison. Two others, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, were found not guilty.
In the morning before the sentencing hearing, Kamio felt that the judge, Mr Justice Johnson, already “had pre-written a crazy sentence”.
The “terrorism connection”, says Kamio, means the activists will serve at least two-thirds of their prison sentences, though it is “likely we’ll have to sit out the whole five-year term”.
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.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/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 demonstrate near members of the National Guard as they stand watch outside Union Station in Washington, DC, on August 20, 2025. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP)
A federal judge ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump’s deployment of more than 2,000 National Guard troops to police Washington, DC, is illegal and must come to an end.
Over objections from city officials, Trump ordered the troops to flood the nation’s capital in August to deter what he claimed was an unstoppable crime wave, even though crime was falling precipitously and was at a 30-year low.
Federal District Judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote that the Trump administration “exceeded the bounds of their authority” and “acted contrary to law” by deploying the National Guard “for nonmilitary, crime-deterrence missions in the absence of a request from the city’s civil authorities.”
She wrote that while Trump is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Trump’s legal authority to deploy troops around the country is subject to limits by Congress, especially in DC, where it has the ultimate authority under the Constitution.
She wrote that the court “rejects defendants’ fly-by assertion of constitutional power, finding that such a broad reading of the president’s Article II authority would erase Congress’ role in governing the district and its National Guard.”
Cobb also said that the Pentagon lacked statutory authority to deploy more than 1,000 out-of-state National Guard members to DC. She wrote that “the district’s exercise of sovereign powers within its jurisdiction is irreparably harmed by defendants’ actions in deploying the guards.”
While finding the administration’s actions illegal, Cobb said it will not be required to pull back troops immediately. She gave the administration until December 11 to file an appeal.
“There is generally no public interest in the perpetuation of unlawful agency action,” Cobb concluded. “There is a substantial public interest in having governmental agencies abide by the federal laws that govern their existence and operations.”
The ruling follows a lawsuit in early September from the office of DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
“The court has ruled that the National Guard deployment to DC is illegal and granted a preliminary injunction,” Schwalb said after the ruling was handed down. “As we made clear from the start: The US military should not police American citizens on American soil. This is a victory for DC, home rule, and American democracy.”
The ruling comes amid legal battles over Trump’s moves to deploy the National Guard in other US cities. The US Supreme Court is expected to soon weigh in on his deployment in Chicago, even as some troops sent to Illinois are headed home.
“Normalizing the use of military troops for domestic law enforcement sets a dangerous precedent,” Schwalb continued. “No president should be empowered to disregard states’ independence and deploy troops anywhere—with no check on their military power. This federal overreach is not normal or legal.”
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Trump, pictured during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in December, says the sentencing should not go ahead. Pic: AP
Donald Trump’s spokesperson called the hush money case “lawless” and a “witch hunt” in a statement released after the sentencing date was announced. “President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead,” he added.
A judge has ordered US president-elect Donald Trump to be sentenced next week in his New York hush money case – but has suggested he will not jail him.
In a surprise move, the sentencing has been set for 10 January, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration.
Trump‘s spokesperson called the case “lawless” and a “witch hunt” in a statement released after the date was announced.
Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, has now confirmed sentencing will go ahead, but signalled in a written decision that he would hand down what is known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.
UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.
Prosecution of five Just Stop Oil activists over M25 protest led to chaotic scenes in court and concerns about ‘judicial persecution’
As part of his role as UN rapporteur for environmental defenders, Michel Forst has been watching proceedings against climate activists at courts across Europe.
But he may not have seen anything like what unfolded at Southwark crown court in London over the past two and a half weeks, where five Just Stop Oil activists were convicted for conspiring to cause gridlock on the M25 in November 2022.
On the days Forst visited, he witnessed three of the five defendants being arrested in court and dragged to the cells, protesters outside attempting to warn jurors they were not hearing the full case and a judge desperately trying to maintain control over his courtroom.
The judge, Christopher Hehir, had ruled that information about climate breakdown could not be entered into evidence, and could only be referred to by defendants briefly as the “political and philosophical beliefs” that motivated them – which he would tell the jury were in any case irrelevant to their deliberations.
But the defendants had other plans. They sought to turn Hehir’s court into a “site of civil resistance”, causing as much disruption as necessary to ensure that if the jury could not see their evidence on climate breakdown, then the jurors could at least be in no doubt it was being kept from them.
By the time the jury retired to consider a verdict, police had been called into court no fewer than seven times, four of the five defendants had been remanded to prison and 11 others were facing contempt of court proceedings for protests outside the courtroom.
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By the end of the trial, Whittaker De Abreu, the only one who had not represented herself, was the only defendant left in court.
As a punishment for their “persistent disruption”, Hehir slashed the time given to each defendant from one hour to 20 minutes. He further prohibited any mention of the climate crisis, the legal defences he had disallowed or the principle of jury equity – the idea that jurors can acquit based on their conscience.
As Hallam, Shaw, Lancaster and Gethin gave their speeches from behind the reinforced glass screen of the dock, they each proceeded to flout Hehir’s prohibitions, arguing they had been denied a right to a fair trial.
Hallam told jurors: “It’s blindingly obvious to us here first that you have not been given all the evidence you need. You cannot be sure of our guilt if you are not sure that you have not been given the evidence … we have received no good reason why we are not allowed to tell you what is blindingly obvious, namely what I’m not allowed to speak about. If you are not allowed to hear the blindingly obvious then it’s not a fair trial is it?”
It took just a day’s deliberations for the jury to unanimously find them guilty.
Given the recent history of UK climate protest trials, in which defendants have been sentenced to jail for merely mentioning the words “climate change”, and notwithstanding the dramatic arrests in court, Forst said he was surprised the judge gave them an opportunity to mention climate breakdown at all.
“But the little latitude they had to mention climate change was in the meantime emptied of its very meaning by the fact that, overall, the jury was told to ignore most of it,” he added.
