LONDON: Britain’s highest court on Wednesday heard an appeal against a government ban on activist group Palestine Action, proscribed as a terrorist organisation, as police arrested protesters gathered outside.
The two-day hearing at the Supreme Court comes as the ban has failed to quell support for the pro-Palestinian group co-founded by Huda Ammori, leading to mass arrests across the UK. ‘I urge the Supreme Court justices to bring this authoritarian overreach-and the chilling censorship it has unleashed-to an end once and for all,’ Ammori said in a statement.
Multiple protesters carrying signs supporting Palestine Action prohibited under terrorism lawswere arrested by police on Wednesday. More than 300 supporters were detained at protests at the weekend.
UK-Brazilian actor Alfred Enoch said he was demonstrating against the ban because it ‘has a chilling effect on people’s ability to engage democratically in one of the great issues of their time, which is the struggle for emancipation of the Palestinian people.’ Protestor Yael Kahn said she joined Wednesday’s demos because people ‘have been arrested, just for the words’ written on a placard.
According to campaign group Defend Our Juries, which has organised demonstrations backing the movement, around 4,200 people have been arrested since the British government outlawed Palestine Action in July last year.
Those detained include large numbers of pensioners, among them a priest, a former financial adviser, a military veteran and Swedish student climate activist Greta Thunberg.Public support for Palestine Action is a criminal offence as the ban places the group in the same legal category as the Al Qaeda organisation and Lebanon’s Iranbacked Hezbollah. The ban followed a series of acts of vandalism linked to the movement, including a trail of damage at a Royal Air Force base and actions targeting Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems in August 2024.
It was imposed under the UK’s Terrorism Act and made membership of or support for the pro-Palestinian group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Ammori’s lawyer Raza Husain told the court that out of 385 actions undertaken by the group in the last five years, ‘only three passed the terrorism threshold’.
‘Palestine Action fall within the tradition of a direct action protest group motivated by conscience, Husain said. The group has ‘never advocated for violence against the persons’, he added.-AFP