Young protesters face more than a year in prison before going on trial over a break-in at an Israeli arms factory near Bristol, Daniel Tester reports.
By Daniel Tester
Declassified UK
Clare Rogers found out that her 21-year-old daughter Zoe had been arrested when police knocked on her door in the early hours of the morning this August.
“It’s been absolutely horrific, I don’t even know where to start,” Clare told Declassified. Zoe, a pro-Palestine activist, “was interrogated for seven days without charge, often in the middle of the night in a windowless cell.”
Clare was unable to speak to Zoe during this period, but later found out her cell “was lit by a strip light and every hour a guard would come up to the door and loudly open the hatch, meaning she wouldn’t sleep.”
Zoe has not been released and is among 18 members of the campaign group Palestine Action denied bail and held on remand.
What a legend????
Lowkey joins Palestine Action outside Bronzefield Prison in solidarity with the Filton 18.
Over a hundred people turned up tonight in resistance to the state's use of counter terrorism legislation being used against them.@Lowkey0nline @Pal_action pic.twitter.com/vnB75nRt6w— Earth Hippy ???? (@hippyygoat) December 15, 2024
They are accused of breaking into a factory owned by Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems.
Six of the group were arrested at an Elbit site in Filton, outside Bristol, after they allegedly drove a modified prison van into the factory and dismantled weapons on Aug. 13.
Four others were subsequently arrested when police raided their homes, with another eight detained and taken to court earlier this month.
BREAKING: cops use COUNTER TERROR powers AGAIN against Palestine Action
Counter-terror cops have raided the homes, and then arrested, another 10 people in connection to @Pal_action August action against Elbit, in Filton.
This. Is. Outrageous. Solidarity.https://t.co/TX2v0thv9l
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) November 19, 2024
Elbit claims the protest caused £1 million worth of damage.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) submits that these offences “have a terrorist connection,” but has not officially charged the protestors with terror offences.
Building that houses the British Crown Prosecution Service in London. (Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
As their trial is not expected until November 2025, they face 15 months of imprisonment before seeing a jury.
Four of those denied bail are aged 22 or younger and have no prior convictions.
Remanded
When Zoe, who is autistic, arrived in prison, Clare says she was not immediately offered a phone call and was held in the prison induction wing for six weeks.
This meant she couldn’t develop relationships with other prisoners who would usually pass through the wing in a matter of days.
The protestors have also been issued with non-association orders that prevent them from speaking to one another.
Unusually, this order even prohibits them from speaking to prisoners from another protest group: Just Stop Oil.
Clare interprets this as an admission that both groups are “political prisoners” and says the order has seriously affected Zoe’s ability to undertake prison activities that let her leave her cell.
“Zoe applied for a job in a bicycle repair workshop, but it just kept not being approved,” she said. “A lot of the time, she couldn’t even make library appointments in case another prisoner on the non-association order was in the library.”
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Sukaina Rajwani’s 20-year-old daughter Fatema Zainab was also arrested at the Filton factory. She believes her child is a political prisoner who is receiving harsher treatment due to being visibly Muslim.
“She was subjected to multiple random drug tests which no one else was subjected to,” Sukaina told Declassified. “All her mail has been withheld from her…these extra measures I fear are due to the Islamophobia that she’s facing in the prison.”
Mothers of two actionists speak to the BBC about the misuse of terrorism legislation against their daughters.
The #Filton10 have been remanded to prison since they allegedly cost Israel's biggest weapons firm over £1million in damages in August 2024. pic.twitter.com/EUDnVajTbI
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) November 14, 2024
‘Mission Creep’
Human rights charities have long queried the use of counter-terror powers against political protestors.
“Using counter-terrorism legislation against people who pose no threat to national security is a clear example of mission creep, and something that the courts do not take kindly to,” said Jacob Smith from the NGO Rights and Security International.
Smith added:
“If there is no evidence suggesting that the parties would be a harm to themselves or others if they were to meet, then preventing them from meeting is troubling from a human rights perspective”.
After their initial arrests, the protestors were re-arrested while already in custody under Terrorism Act powers.
This allowed police to detain and interrogate the protestors for around a week without charge, and delayed their access to legal support and statutory phone calls.
The protestors were ultimately charged with aggravated burglary and criminal damage. All besides two have also been charged with violent disorder.
In addition, one protestor, Samuel Corner, 22, has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm and acute bodily harm to two police officers.
One of the protestors’ mothers, Emma Kamio, 57, was also arrested and interrogated without charge for five days, before being released.
Connections in High Places
Then U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel leaves St Paul’s Cathedral with other ministers after the Platinum Jubilee service on June 3, 2022. (Andrew Parsons / No 10, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Palestine Action believes the prosecution is being politicised.
Documents obtained by the group through Freedom of Information requests revealed details of a meeting between the then Home Secretary Priti Patel and Martin Fausset, CEO of Elbit Systems U.K.
Patel apparently intended to “reassure” Fausset that anti-Elbit protestors will be cracked down on by the CPS.
Another document shows a separate meeting with Elbit representatives was attended by a director of the Attorney General’s Office, said to be representing the CPS.
Elbit manufactures approximately 85 percent of air and land military equipment used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
It specialises in drones, one of which killed three British aid workers in Gaza earlier this year.
Weeks after the break-in at the Filton factory, Foreign Secretary David Lammy suspended some arms exports to Israel, including drone parts, citing a risk of international law violations.
Daniel Tester is a journalist who has written for Middle East Eye and Bristol Cable.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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