DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Six British pro-Palestinian activists have been acquitted of aggravated burglary relating to a 2024 raid on a factory operated by Israeli defence firm Elbit, with a jury unable to reach verdicts on charges of criminal damage.
Prosecutors at London’s Woolwich Crown Court said on Wednesday the six defendants, whose trial began in November, were members of the now-banned group Palestine Action, which organised the assault on the Elbit Systems United Kingdom facility in Bristol, southwest England, in August last year.
The six – Charlotte Head, 29, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31 – all denied charges of aggravated burglary, violent disorder and criminal damage.
Rajwani, Rogers and Devlin were found not guilty of violent disorder by a jury at the Woolwich Crown Court, while it could not reach verdicts on the same charge against Head, Corner and Kamio after more than 36-and-a-half hours of deliberation.
The six defendants hugged in the dock and waved to supporters in the public gallery, who cheered loudly after the judge had left the court.
A press statement from a group of activists supporting the six under trials noted that the jury, which deliberated over the case for eight days, did not convict a single defendant of any offence, including violent disorder and criminal damage, despite several defendants admitting they used sledgehammers to destroy drones inside the facility.
The prosecution said the group entered the 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 to “prevent violence”, the statement added.
The detainees, who are just some of a total of 24 activists linked to the group who have been arrested at different times, have been in custody for more than a year without trial, breaking the UK’s six-month pre-trial detention limit.
Their prosecution, which has drawn international scrutiny, has become a test case for how the British government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer is dealing with pro-Palestine demonstrations, with many UK residents and rights groups accusing authorities of heavy-handedness.
The ban on the Palestine Action has been challenged in court. The group describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms industry in the United Kingdom with direct action”.
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