https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/12/the-pro-palestine-activists-imprisoned-for-months-without-being-found-guilty-of-any-crime/. Should be read in conjunction with this article by Declassified UK that shows collusion between the UK government and Home Office, Israel and Elbit Systems in persecuting Palestine Action activists.
Activists are being treated like terrorists.
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Emma, a small business-owner living in Wales, said riot police raided her home without a warrant, despite having already arrested her daughter. “I was half naked [when they came in],” she said “They seized my work laptop, and my 16-year-old’s school laptop, handcuffed me and then led me away.”
Emma was kept by the police in solitary confinement for five days. “I disappeared from my family almost a week before they released me without charge and without apology, my life and my business upside down. I was left traumatised, in prison scrubs, 150 miles from my home, feeling like an animal. [My crime] was raising a young woman with a great moral compass.”
A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: “A complaint against police has been made which remains under investigation.”
Punished without trial.
Emma’s daughter is one of over 40 political prisoners identified by campaign group Defend Our Juries who have been jailed in the UK since July. The case of the Filton 18 has become emblematic of the UK’s increasingly repressive relationship with political activism. Advocates for the activists say the group is effectively being punished through the UK government’s abuse of counter-terrorism measures in a desperate bid to deter Palestine Action from targeting Elbit.
The controversy has reached parliament. In a Westminster Hall debate in December, John McDonnell MP made a rare, impassioned intervention on the Filton 18’s behalf, saying: “A number of them most probably will be proved innocent, but they’ll have served nearly two years in prison – for what? For trying to do what we’re failing to do – preventing this government supplying arms to a regime that’s killing children.”
In November, United Nations observers wrote to the head of the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, about the case. The activists appear to have been arrested under counter-terrorism legislation “for conduct that appears to be in the nature of ordinary criminal offences and does not appear to be genuinely ‘terrorist’ according to international standards”, the observers said. In late January, the government responded saying it would not be appropriate to comment while criminal proceedings are ongoing.
The measures taken against the Filton 18 are an escalation from the British state, especially with regards to Palestine Action. For four years, actions by those associated with the group were prosecuted using non-terrorism related charges, meaning they were released on bail before their trial. “[But now that] they’re being tagged and held in remand in connection to terrorism, suddenly the courts are very cautious of giving bail,” said Simon Pook, a lawyer at Robert Lizar, the firm defending the Filton 18. Pook spoke with Novara Media in general terms, not specifically about the Filton 18.
“When people are arrested under terrorist legislation, they are held in a remand space that is separate from the standard criminal cell. It’s very sterile and intentionally isolating, detaining you in confinement for up to seven days in what I view to be an immensely tortured position,” said Pook.
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For Pook, there’s a concerning continuity between the overzealous anti-protest laws brought in by the previous Tory administration and the current Labour one. “Our civil liberties are in grave danger under the current process that is labelling activist groups as terrorist suspects, as first rolled out by the Conservatives and now Labour,” he said.
While the Filton 18 languish in prison being treated like terrorists, they will not be charged for terrorism, per se. The CPS intends instead to argue a “link with terrorism”. This loose “link with terrorism” charge is a new development in the UK’s legal landscape, but one that echoes the mistreatment of the Irish community in the 70s, 80s and 90s. “It’s a very chilling moment,” said Pook.
“I remember when the UK government called the Irish a ‘suspect community’. They were labelled as terrorists through similar processes we’re seeing today, detained at airports and ferry ports under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The UK government is moving us to the point where activists are suspects, criminalising the rights of protest. This causes me grave concern.”
Pook also points to the lobbying power of the arms and fossil fuel industries – and the geopolitical interests attached to those mammoth sectors. “If the government wants those industries to develop, they’ve got to curtail opposition to it.”
Freedom of Information disclosures show that in recent years, Elbit held multiple meetings and conversations with UK ministers and the attorney general’s office (AGO), which oversees the CPS. (The AGO told Novara Media: “We do not provide a running commentary on who the AGO holds meetings with or how many.”)
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https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/12/the-pro-palestine-activists-imprisoned-for-months-without-being-found-guilty-of-any-crime/. Should be read in conjunction with this article by Declassified UK that shows collusion between the UK government and Home Office, Israel and Elbit Systems in persecuting Palestine Action activists.
