Defendants were not told that a criminal damage case could carry a terrorism connection until after they were found guilty, reports John McEvoy.
A Palestine Action sticker seen in Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK, in 2023. (Leo Reynolds / Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
By John McEvoy
Declassified UK
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wants to sentence five more Palestine activists as terrorists for committing criminal damage, it can be revealed.
Brendon O’Hagan, Amanda Kelly, Hmeera Atiqnisar, Mohammed Malik, and Alma Yaniv were convicted of criminal damage last month for a protest at a Barclays bank branch in Burnley in 2024.
It was carried out in the name of Palestine Action almost a year before the group was banned under terrorism laws.
In the agreed facts of the case, the prosecution’s lawyers acknowledged that Barclays provided investments and loans to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms firm.
The court heard that the activists smashed windows and sprayed red paint over the building, with damage costs allegedly amounting to £212,805.
Court filings show that it was only after the trial concluded that the CPS decided to apply for a terrorism connection to be added to the case.
The move came after the judge overseeing the case requested submissions on whether the case should be designated as having a terrorism connection.
This means that neither the jury nor the defendants were aware that the case could carry a terrorism connection until after the guilty verdicts were delivered.
If the judge agrees to attach a terrorism connection to the case, the activists will have to serve much longer prison sentences.
They would be treated as terrorists upon release for decades, with requirements to register new electronic devices, email addresses, bank accounts, and romantic relationships with the police.
The move suggests that a ruling last month against another four Palestine Action activists, who were sentenced as terrorists by Justice Jeremy Johnson, is already having far-reaching consequences for protest-related trials in Britain.
Johnson treated the four protesters as terrorists even though they were only convicted of criminal damage at an Elbit Systems factory in the Filton area of Bristol.
U.K. activism against Israeli weapons maker Elbit, Oct. 28, 2014. (Campaign Against Arms Trade, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Atiqnisar, one of the defendants in the Barclays case, told Declassified: “You go through a two-week trial only to be told after it’s over that you were on trial for terrorism.
“Johnson’s judgment has opened up the floodgates for potentially hundreds of activists to be sentenced as terrorists for taking direct action against genocide.
“It’s a few broken windows and red paint that they’re now saying is terrorism. It shows you the lengths the state is willing to go to in order to protect the Israeli weapons trade.
“I’m definitely scared. I can’t say I’m not scared. It’s frightening but what’s far more frightening is living in a world where genocide is normalised and people abstain from resisting it.”
Terrorism Connection
In court documents seen by Declassified, the prosecution’s lawyers acknowledged that “no determination was sought before trial” to sentence the activists as terrorists.
However, they argued that the circumstances of the case changed during cross-examination and opened the door for the defendants to be charged under terrorism provisions.
Four of the five defendants gave evidence that “they were members of, or affiliated, with Palestine Action at the time of the offending” and “had attended Palestine Action training.”
“The present offending formed part of a wider Palestine Action campaign directed against Barclays comprising in excess of twenty similar attacks,” the prosecution lawyers wrote.
These matters “emerged for the first time during the defence case and went significantly beyond the defendants’ respective defence statements.”
The defendants’ statements in court, the lawyers argued, allow for the criminal damage convictions to carry a terrorism connection under the Sentencing Act.
They said the offending “involved serious damage to property; was designed to influence the government or intimidate the public or a section of the public; and was undertaken for the purpose of advancing a political or ideological cause.”
Palestine Action carried out dozens of direct actions against Barclays branches in 2024 in an attempt to force the bank to divest from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms firm.
In the agreed facts of the case, it was acknowledged that “Barclays PLC provided investments, loans and other corporate financial services to Elbit Systems, a weapons and military technology company.”
Equipment manufactured by Elbit Systems, the agreed facts continued, “has been used by the Israeli military during operations in Gaza, including during the conflict in 2023-2024.”
It was also conceded by the prosecution that Elbit has been “involved in the construction and maintenance of sections of Israel’s West Bank barrier” including “cameras and remotely operated weapons systems.”
In October 2024, three months after the Palestine Action campaign, it was reported that Barclays had sold all of its 16,345 shares in Elbit. Those shares were worth over $3.4m.
Filton Precedent
Last month, four other Palestine Action activists were sentenced as terrorists in connection with the raid at an Elbit Systems factory in Filton in August 2024.
Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani damaged 40 military assets belonging to Elbit, including quadcopters, allegedly causing over £1m in damage.
During the sentencing hearing, Justice Jeremy Johnson ruled that this constituted “serious damage to property” as defined within the Terrorism Act (2000).
He also said the action was “designed to influence the U.K. government and to intimidate a section of the public, and was for the purpose of advancing a political cause.”
This was despite defence counsel submitting that the Terrorism Act was never intended to allow for the designation of activism as terrorism on the basis of property damage alone.
Johnson’s ruling marked the first time that protesters had been sentenced as terrorists and appears to have opened the door for further terrorism convictions in protest-related cases.
Notably, his failure to clarify where the threshold lies for “serious damage to property” appears to have allowed for lower-level direct action campaigns to be caught in terrorism provisions.
Lowering the Threshold
Protester being arrested in London on Sept. 6, 2025, for holding a sign saying “I support Palestine Action.” (Alisdaire Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The move to prosecute the Barclays activists as terrorists comes despite that incident taking place almost a year prior to the proscription of Palestine Action.
When the government was building its case for proscription, the MI5-based Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) listed three incidents of alleged “terrorism” carried out by the group.
The incident at Barclays had already taken place when the JTAC report was drafted. But it was not classified among those three incidents, all of which allegedly involved over £1m in damage.
In fact, the Barclays action appears to be the first protest case involving less than £1m in damage costs to be pursued by the CPS under terrorism provisions.
This suggests that scores of protest-related criminal damage trials could now be pursued as terrorism without the knowledge of juries – and, in this case, the defendants.
Moreover, it raises concerns about how the law could be applied arbitrarily to protest cases, with some being designated as terrorism and others not for no discernible reason.
The defendants have applied for a pre-sentencing hearing for legal arguments to be heard regarding the attachment of a terrorism connection to the case.
They are due to be sentenced on 4 September 2026.
John McEvoy is chief reporter for Declassified UK. John is an historian and filmmaker whose work focuses on British foreign policy and Latin America. His PhD was on Britain’s Secret Wars in Colombia between 1948 and 2009, and he is currently working on a documentary about Britain’s role in the rise of Augusto Pinochet.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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A bit late to this conversation, but a KC acting for the original defendants is now facing prosecution himself – thanks to Judge Johnson :
hxxps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/23/palestine-action-trial-lawyer-prosecution-criticised-rajiv-menon-kc
It is utterly shocking what has happened to ‘justice’ in the UK, much of it thanks to that well known ‘human rights lawyer’ Starmer who went way over and above the Tories’ repressive legislation.
All the markers of an authoritarian system. Orwell’s notion of a state prosecuting “thought crime” made reality. Monarchy is always an authoritarian form of government. This includes ‘constitutional monarchies’ where there is no written constitution and the elites just make up the rules as they go along. The British system of fake democracy and “King’s Justice” has always been designed to keep the elites in charge, with only trappings of democracy and justice to mollify the King’s Subjects.
an early test for burnham. since we’re all well aware of starmer’s involvement in johnson’s actions, it would the utmost cowardice for burnham to remain silent on this. so no doubt he will remain silent.
Government proceeds by fraud and force — fraud when possible, force when necessary. The proliferation of alternatives to establishment media (BBC, the Guardian, etc.) has eroded the efficacy of fraud. Public opinion diverges increasingly from public policy. So governments rely increasingly on force. In the UK, of course, the universal shift to ever greater repression is dressed up in the self-preening sententiousness intrinsic to the judiciary. Elsewhere, there is less hypocrisy, if not less violence.
How about self defense of palastinian minors who cannot defend themselves from british arms companies.
The legal argument that activists acted in “self-defense” or “defense of another” to protect Palestinian minors from British-made weapons is known in UK law as the defense of necessity or prevention of crime under section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967.
An appeal of convictions
“Terrorist” is the label that they slap on you when they want to deprive you of your legal rights.
It should not be activists trying to stop genocide and fascism that are on trial for terrorism, it is genocide and fascism being shoved down the public’s throats that is on trial. The corporate and political class in the West are showing their true colors. They have no love of freedom or democracy if it means losing their grip on global domination. It is they who should be facing charges of terrorism.
Right on Lois Gagnon! Where or where does the overriding fealty of judges lie? Justice, reality and plain ole common sense? or needy affiliation to the inflated power complex (Zionism) of and membership in the Corporate, Political and Epstein Fraternity?
When a political process appoints the judges, the judges are of course very political. Its the only way to become a judge.
A non-political lawyer, no matter how knowledgeable of the law or how honest they may be in applying it, will never become a judge because the politicians who appoint and confirm the judges do not even know who they are. The politicians personally know the lawyers that are sucking up to the politicians in the hopes of becoming a judge, so the non-political lawyer is at best at the back of that line.
In the UK, I believe the proper title of ‘The Judge’ is “His Majesty’s Justice.” The barristers arguing before “His Majesty’s Justice” are known as “King’s Councilors”. To seek justice, one has to hire a King’s Councilor and appear in His Majesty’s Court.
I think the titles make it rather clear as to where the fealty of the judges lie. And since we are dealing with a feudal system, fealty was a very good choice of a word.
The oligarchs have never had any love of democracy or freedom. In The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the political class dances to the oligarch’s tune.
In the English and American systems, Liberty was always mirage. The English mollified their peasants with it, when they freed them from the forced labor of serfdom, but locked them into a Lower Class in a firm class based system. The American Revolution against the tyranny of the King was really just an English Civil War, where the ruling class of America wanted to free themselves from being under the King, but otherwise keep everything exactly the same. Alexander Hamilton thought that George Washington should be named as King of America. That ruling class did not want a Bill of Rights, but the American people forced it upon them by rejecting this Constitution.
Oligarchs, and the modern Corporate Class that bends the knee to them, and the politicians that they buy, will always hate democracy and freedom. To do otherwise would be to oppose their own existence. This must be true,even if one would need to mass administer truth serum to get them to admit their real feelings towards democracy and real actual people.