Six Palestine Action activists who broke into an Israeli arms factory in the UK have been acquitted or not convicted of all charges against them.
Campaigners told The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday that the result was a “monumental” and “total” victory.
After eight days of deliberation in January and February, the jury either acquitted or refused to convict Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin of all charges.
Five out of the six were released on bail Wednesday evening.
All six were found not guilty of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge which could have led to life sentences.
The six activists were arrested on site in August 2024 and held on remand for 17 months.
They were the first of a total of 24 defendants to face trials relating to the invasion and smashing of a factory in Filton, near Bristol in the west of England, owned by a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.
The group of 24 includes some of the prisoners who recently went on a hunger strike.
Once inside, the group destroyed Israeli quadcopter drones, which have been used frequently to massacre Palestinians in Gaza.
During the trial, acquitted defendant Fatema Zainab Rajwani (a third-year film student at the time of the action) was open that, “I damaged drones which is what I went in to do.” She commented on video footage shown to the court, saying, “That is me dismantling a quadcopter drone with a crowbar,” and explaining that the group wanted to “document the presence of quadcopters and [Elbit’s] crimes.”
Fourteen other defendants were rounded up by Britain’s feared Counter Terrorism Police, in a series of violent pre-dawn raids in November 2024 and July last year.
A Palestine Action source told The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday that the remaining Filton 24 prisoners will now appeal to be released on bail.
Such prisoners can usually be held on remand before trial for up to six months. But the politicization and fallacious government “terrorism” campaign against the group – in connivance with Israel – meant that the campaigners have been held on remand for as long as 17 months.
Not guilty
In addition to beating the most serious charge, the jury acquitted Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin of violent disorder. It refused to convict Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner and Leona Kamio of the same charge.
Samuel Corner was also not convicted of “grievous bodily harm with intent” for allegedly striking a police officer.
Crucially, the jury refused to convict any of the defendants of criminal damage.
Yet five of the group had admitted in court to destroying Israeli weapons and equipment belonging to Elbit at the factory.
That the jury could not reach a majority verdict on some of the lesser charges means in theory that there could be retrails in some cases – though that is not expected to have a realistic chance of success.
That is why the sixth defendant, Samuel Corner, was not immediately released on bailed on Wednesday. Government prosecutors asked the court for more time to decide if they wanted to pursue a retrial in relation to the grievous bodily harm charge.
The Palestine Action source also said that certain issues relating to matters under reporting restrictions imposed by the judge in this trial meant that the verdict was the best possible outcome for the group.
The source said that the verdict represented a “total victory” for the six Palestine Action campaigners.
Most of the remaining “Filton 24” group have been held on draconian remand for months – for more than a year in some cases.
But one, Sean Middlebrough, escaped during a short-term release in November last year. In an exclusive statement, he told The Electronic Intifada that he was not on the run, and was instead “refusing to be held as a prisoner of war of Israel in a British prison.”
Government ministers such as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper attempted to portray the Filton activists as violent criminals who assaulted a police officer. The British press for the most part obediently parroted such claims and insinuations.
But during this “Filton 6” trial, body-cam footage released to the jury – some of which can be viewed in the video above – showed the exact opposite: Elbit security guards apparently assaulting the activists with sledgehammers.
In a statement released on Wednesday the Filton 24 Defence Committee said the result was a “monumental victory.”
The committee detailed how the trial unfolded.
According to the committee, the verdicts demonstrated that “the jury did not accept the prosecution case that the defendants entered the Elbit weapons factory with the intention of using the items they carried as weapons.”
They said that instead the “jury agreed with the defense argument, that the defendants’ sole intention was to use the items, including sledgehammers, as tools to disarm Israeli weapons … The jury understood that it is not those who destroy Israeli weapons which are guilty, rather the guilty party is the one that deploys such weapons to commit genocide in Gaza.”
The trial also revealed that footage went missing from a number of Elbit’s internal CCTV cameras covering key angles, the committee said. The security guards’ body-worn videos had also been repeatedly turned off and on, as well as edited by Elbit.
Twenty-first century suffragettes
Defense lawyer Rajiv Menon compared the six to the suffragettes – women who demanded the right to vote. In the early 20th century, the suffragettes were routinely denounced as “terrorists and extremists,” although “the reality of course is very different,” Menon said.
The lawyer also said that Judge Jeremy Johnson tried to exclude evidence on Elbit Systems, and interrupted when counsel for the defense asked questions about the Israeli weapons manufacturer.
Menon said that the judge “has restricted what the defendants have been allowed to tell you … what they knew about Elbit’s role in the Israeli attack on Gaza. The consequence of that is that you do not know everything that the defendants knew about Elbit before” they took action against the factory.
The lawyer told the jury that Elbit is a “massive weapons company that has played a critical role in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians.”
At the end of the evidence, the judge told the jury that the “situation in the Middle East” and Elbit’s operations are “not relevant” to the case and directed the jury to “follow the legal directions I’ve given you and not anything else.”
The judge also issued a series of reporting restrictions on the case. As a result, I am still prevented from reporting certain details here.
Nonetheless, because the case was heard in open court, I am able to report the following.
During the trial, a juror asked whether they were allowed to acquit because the defendants genuinely believed that they were destroying weapons to prevent their use in genocide.
The judge’s response was “no.”
Trials of the remaining Filton 24 prisoners are still due to happen at some point in the future.
Blow to UK and Israel
Clare Rogers, the mother of defendant Zoe Rogers and a relentless campaigner in her own right said in the committee’s statement that “these are six young people of conscience … They had tried everything else – marches, petitions, writing to MPs, encampments … They felt they had no option but to take action themselves, to try to save as many lives as they could.”
The verdicts are a severe blow to the UK government’s attempt to smear Palestine campaigners as violent criminals and “terrorists.”
In a controversial move last July the home secretary banned Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group, marking the first time ever a non-violent protest group had been outlawed under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act of 2000.
Activist lisa minerva luxx, from the Filton 24 Defence Committee, criticized the government for prejudicing the trial: “This was a trial by media. Yvette Cooper and [Prime Minister] Keir Starmer took evidence in this case out of context and broadcast it on televisions and tabloids across the country in order to justify proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.”
With the result of a legal challenge to that ban expected any week now, the verdict also represents a serious blow to the credibility of that proscription.
This is despite the government – and even the legal system – going to the greatest lengths to try and stitch up this case.
There are also serious implications for the continuing right to trial by jury in the UK.
The fact that a jury of their peers acquitted or refused to convict the first six of the Filton 24 shows the importance and the democratic potential of jury trials.
It is exactly for those reasons that the UK government is seeking to abolish, or seriously erode, the right to trial by jury in the UK. In large part, these so-called “reforms” seem to be targeted precisely at supporting Israel and preventing juries from acquitting according to their conscience.
source: Electronic Intifada