British Pro-Palestinian Activists Get Two Huge Legal Wins in Court

20.02.2026

In LALIT, we have been following the massive movement around the organization “Palestine Action”, and we celebrate with them their two recent political victories in the Courts. The first one was in the Woolwich Crown Court in London.

The Court upheld the “Right to Protest”. Here is a summary of the judgment following the jury’s decision.

The Court was delivering its verdict in the trial of six activists of Palestine Action charged after an August 2024 direct action on an Elbit Systems UK facility in Filton, near Bristol, which is an Israeli-owned weapons factory. Elbit Systems has several weapons factories in the UK and it proudly describes its drones, which have been used extensively in Israel genocide against the population of Gaza-Palestine, as “the backbone” of Israel Occupation Forces’ drone fleet.

Elbit Systems was a target of Palestine Action’s campaign, which had called to “shut Elbit down” before Palestine Action was outlawed as a supposed “terrorist organisation” in July of last year. Palestine Action backed direct actions, without any violence against people. The organization, rightly accusing the UK of complicity in Israel’s atrocities, was, and still is, at the same time fighting this ban in courts. That is the second Court case we are looking at, and you can read about this other high profile court case further down in this post.

Acquitted on the most serious Charge of “aggravated burglary”

Firstly, on 4 February, the Jury at the London’s Woolwich Crown Court acquitted the six British pro-Palestinians activists of the most serious charge of “aggravated burglary”, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. So this is a major victory.

On another charge of “violent disorder”, the jury found three of the six activists not guilty, but it has been unable, after more than 30 hours of deliberation, to reach verdicts on the same charge for the other three activists. So, no verdict has been handed down.

On the charges of “criminal damage” against all six defendants, the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

The jury was also unable to reach a verdict on a charge of “causing grievous bodily harm with intent” against one of the six activists.

While the defendants have been acquitted on the charge of aggravated burglary, the Prosecution was considering seeking a retrial on the “no-verdict” charges, which now, according to BBC, are set for Court for Wednesday 18 February.

Prosecutors at ⁠Woolwich Crown Court said on the day of the verdict that the six defendants, whose trial began in November, were members of the now-banned group Palestine Action.

Palestine Action has argued that their actions were intended to "disarm" weapons, and to prevent Israeli Elbit Systems using its 16 weapons facilities in the UK to continue arm the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza, Palestine.

No Conviction Verdict

A press statement from the activist group supporting the six under trial highlighted that, after eight days of deliberation, the jury came out with “No Guilty” and “No Verdict” verdicts, and that meant there is a “no-conviction” verdict on all of the charges put by the prosecution, including “violent disorder” and “criminal damage”, despite several defendants admitting they used sledgehammers to destroy drones inside the Israeli arms factory.

The prosecution argued that the group entered the Elbit Systems site last August with the “intent to use violence”; however, the “jury agreed with the defence argument that the defendants’ sole intention was to use the items, including sledgehammers, as tools to disarm Israeli weapons so as to “prevent violence”, the statement added.

The six who had been “detainees” for so long, are amongst a total of 24 activists, “The Filton-24”, linked to Palestine Action actions were arrested for different direct actions at Elbit Systems weapons factories in the UK and at the Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Oxfordshire. Despite the six-month pre-trial detention limit, the 24 activists were detained for well over a year without trial. Many of them were on lengthy hunger strikes to protest against their long pre-trial detention and against UK's involvement with Elbit Systems. Palestine Action has been active in the UK and has consistently exposed the UK government’s complicity in Israeli war crimes in Gaza and has been committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal war and apartheid regime.

Palestine Action has claimed responsibility for the two direct actions.

Political Fallout of Palestine Action sustained campaign against Elbit Systems

The Times newspaper has reported on the British government’s recent decision against awarding Elbit Systems UK a 2-billion-pound ($2.68bn) army training contract. This can be considered a partial victory.

Five of the first six Filton 24 activists have now been released on bail, but only after spending 18 months in pre-trial detention, despite the legal limit being only six months. They were detained without conviction, far beyond what the law allows. The struggle continues to free “the Filton 24”. The Filton-6 are Charlotte Head, ‌29, Samuel Corner, ⁠23, Leona Kamio, 30, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, and ‌Jordan Devlin, 31 – all of whom deny the charges of aggravated burglary, violent disorder and criminal damage.

In LALIT, we say the struggle to “Free Palestine” continues …

Starmer Government Declaration of “Palestine Action” as “terror” organization “unlawful”

The UK High Court judges on 13 February ruled “unlawful” the Starmer Government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a “terror” organisation. The Starmer banning was judged not within the boundaries of “proportionality”.

The wider picture is one of Western governments giving political backing to the zionist regime of Israel and in particular Britain giving political backing and actively arming Israel to commit genocide in Palestine in particular in Gaza, and a picture of Britain is over-reaching its repressive powers and thus curbing the right to peacefully express political dissent to the government’s support of genocidal Israel.

In a statement responding to the landmark ruling on Friday, Palestine Action’s cofounder Huda Ammori, who had challenged the government’s ban, hailed the ruling as a huge win for the group. Huda Ammori calls the ruling a "monumental victory for both our fundamental freedoms in Britain and in the struggle for freedom for the Palestinian people".

Founded in 2020, Palestine Action’s stated objective has been to counter Israeli war crimes In Palestine in particular in Gaza and British complicity with genocidal Israel – by direct actions targeting weapons manufacturers such as Elbit Systems and associated companies. It was after a direct action at the UK’s largest air base in Oxfordshire that the government banned Palestine Action.

The High Court ruling has not actually lifted the ban. The prosecutors have put in an Appeal. So, the ban remains temporarily in place pending an Appeal hearing on 20 February. The Police in the UK have meanwhile arrested and charged some three thousand people who held up pancartes reading merely “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. The Metropolitan Police says it will refrain from arresting people temporarily, and will only gather evidence for such cases.

Tens of thousands of people in the UK have protested against the ban. Old people, blind people, people in wheel-chairs, women and men of all ages, some 3,000 civilians in all, have been arrested by the Metropolitan police. The Court accepted that the ban led to the criminalization of thousands of peaceful supporters, which was deemed a disproportionate outcome. Some 2,787 people arrested for “terrorism offences” for peacefully holding signs those innocent signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” during the silent vigils they held across the UK.

The three judges concluded that the ban was a "very significant interference" with the rights to freedom of expression and assembly protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which the British State adheres.

The court found that the government had acted disproportionately, saying that there were other means by which it could prosecute actual criminal acts without resorting to a blanket ban. The ruling emphasized that standard criminal law—rather than anti-terrorism legislation—is sufficient and available to address property damage and other non-violent criminal acts committed by the group. On the proportionality test, the Home Secretary focused almost exclusively on how the ban will help the police disrupt the group, but has failed to properly measure the impact of the ban on the legitimate right to protest.

The judges found the government's move to label the entire organization as "terrorist" was a legal overreach. The High Court found that the Home Secretary (at the time, Yvette Cooper) failed to follow her own department's published policy on proscription.

The government tried to argue that by making membership a crime, this somehow justified the ban itself. The court rejected this, noting that membership is a crime for all proscribed groups and the government has failed to explain why the Palestine Action group needed to be banned over and above the existing criminal law.

The ban is a draconian overreach that criminalises legitimate political dissent.

The two legal victories have put the fundamental freedoms of the right to protest, freedom to assemble and freedom of expression in Britain and in the struggle for the Palestinian people. This is a legacy of the tradition of direct action over centuries and will be on the line if the Starmer’s Government persists, under the pressure of the zionist lobby, to go for retrial of the Filton-6 and appeal against the High Court ruling.

People in Britain have shown that, through their collective courageous action, they could make the banning unenforceable, simply by standing up and effectively saying to government banning ‘I do not agree, arrest me.’ (This method was used in the past in Mauritius in 1978, when 14 activists were imprisoned after being found guilty under the Public Order Act of illegal demonstration. Hundreds of people, including some of us in LALIT, stood in a long queue to give statements saying we also demonstrated.)

Following the High Court ruling in London, the government should drop all charges under the Terrorist Act against all Palestine Action activists in prison and the thousands who took part in the massive civil disobedience campaign, as well as withdrawing any move for a re-trial or appeal in the other case.

To quote Palestine Action, “Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism”.

Massive disobedience campaigns and direct actions have shown the power ordinary people have to shut down weapons factories across their own countries and across the world, when governments are complicit with genocide.

So, for us in Mauritius, we are to stand up against the Ramgoolam-Berenger-Duval-Subron government’s complicit silence regarding the real role of the US-UK Diego Garcia Military Base on part of the territory of the Republic of Mauritius. It is clearly used for USA-Israel plans to attack Iran, as it was used to attack Yemen, and thus in both cases to support the on-going Israeli genocide that Iran and the Ansar Allah in Yemen oppose. Diego Garcia’s military base is also part and parcel of the support network for Israel’s continued militarisation of Palestine, by its declaring any part of Gaza, West Bank including East Jerusalem as restricted military zones.

The struggle to close the US-UK military base on Diego Garcia should be on the agenda of all workers organisations in the Republic, thus joining our voice to the global movement to close military bases.