Rajiv Menon, a leading British civil rights barrister, again faces contempt proceedings over his closing speech in trial of pro-Palestine activists, reports Dania Akkad.
The judge didn’t allow Palestine Action activists at trial to explain they were trying to stop a genocide. Their attorneys decried terrorism sentences following a nonviolent conviction as unprecedented and dangerous to speech.
Four activists could be sentenced as terrorists despite Palestine Action not being proscribed at the time of the incident and the High Court subsequently finding the ban unlawful, pending an appeal, writes John McEvoy.
In a rare move, five pro-Palestine direct-action defendants dismissed their lawyers and delivered impassioned speeches about Britain’s role in the Gaza genocide, John McEvoy reports.
Amid a media blackout, British authorities and their Israeli collaborators are determined to curtail the activist group as they face their last legal chance to do so.
Jurors bravely set aside social conditioning, the instinct to defer to authority and media expectations. Instead they considered the actual evidence, reports Jonathan Cook.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners claim ‘huge blow’ to U.K. government after landmark prosecution of the direct action group fails, report Phil Miller and Dania Akkad.
Keir Starmer needs convictions to justify Palestine Action’s proscription as a terrorist group. In the Filton trial, the direct-action group’s barrister explained how jurors pose a vital defence against government tyranny.
Here are some key extracts to give you an idea of what has been going on in the U.K. trial of six peace activists accused of the attack inside Elbit Systems’ Filton factory on Aug. 6, 2024.
With this prosecution, the British government hopes to legitimize its proscription of Palestine Action and deflect attention from its own sustained support for Israel’s genocide.