Broken Justice: Filton 6 Activists to Be Sentenced on Terrorism Charges That Were Not Disclosed to the Jury

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What do we call a legal system that allows a judge to add a terrorism conviction at the sentencing phase of a trial, when the jury, who convicted the defendants of criminal damage, were not even told about it? Rigged, broken and a travesty of justice.

I haven’t published an article about Palestine Action here on my website since July last year, when I posted Why We Are All Palestine Action, and Why Direct Action to Prevent Genocide Is the Opposite of Terrorism, after MPs voted to support the scandalous proscription, by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper, of the direct action group as a terrorist organization.

I have, however, continued to cover developments on my Substack. See Mass arrests in London for opposing genocide last August, as hundreds of concerned citizens were arrested for peacefully holding up placards stating, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, and Palestine Action ban ruled unlawful in February, covering the High Court ruling that is now being contested by the government in the Court of Appeals.

Two weeks ago, I posted Defending direct action to prevent a genocide, at the end of the retrial of the Filton 6, activists who, in August 2024, undertook direct action against a factory in Bristol owned by Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms company that manufactures drones and other weapons used in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and which included a powerful closing statement by one of the defendants, Charlotte Head. The first trial of the Filton 6, who had been held on remand (without charge or trial) since August 2024, in punitive conditions that encouraged many of them to engage in hunger strikes, began last November and ended in February with the jury dismissing some charges and unable to reach a verdict on others, but, instead of backing down, the government immediately launched a retrial.

I’ve also posted Notes on Substack, most recently, Filton 6 trial jury verdict: four guilty of criminal damage, two cleared, as the jury announced its verdicts in the retrial on May 5, and, previously, London: 523 arrested for protesting a genocide, on April 12, The shameful Filton 6 retrial, on April 13, and 1,700 scholars, public figures and concerned individuals risk arrest via an open letter declaring support for Palestine Action as government appeal begins, on April 28.

I also recently spoke to Chris Cook, for his Gorilla Radio show in western Canada, about the retrial of the Filton 6 activists, and you can find that interview, also on Substack, here.

The jaw-droppingly cynical addition of a post-trial terrorism conviction

Nothing, however, quite prepared me for an extraordinary development two days ago regarding the retrial of the Filton 6, when reporting restrictions were lifted that had prevented British journalists from discussing a novel and sickening twist in the story of the conviction of four of the six defendants last week — Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani — on charges of criminal damage. I do note, however, that The Grayzone, based in the US, bypassed the restriction and reported it last month.

The twist was that the judge, Mr. Justice Johnson (Jeremy Johnson), had secretly arranged for their sentencing to include a separate determination as to whether or not their actions constituted terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000.

In what the Guardian described as “an unprecedented move in a criminal damage case”, Mr. Justice Johnson “ruled before the first trial that there appeared to be a ‘terrorist connection’ to the offences” — even though this was before Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organization — but insisted that the jury “could not be told”, a restriction that continued throughout the retrial.

In other words, although convicted by a jury of criminal damage, their final sentence may well involve a horrendous and stealthily added charge of terrorism, which, as the Guardian put it, “would mean the four would have to serve their whole sentence in prison, unless a parole board approved their release after completing two-thirds of their sentence”, in contrast to non-terrorist prisoners, who usually serve only 40% of their sentence. As the Guardian added, “The parole board would also have to be satisfied that the defendants were reformed and had rescinded their beliefs.”

Furthermore, “Upon release, the defendants could be recorded as terrorists for life, meaning any new device, bank account, email address or relationship would have to be registered with the police for the rest of their life and they could be sent back to prison if they do not comply or make a mistake.”

That this is screamingly unfair and legally inappropriate ought to be blindingly obvious, but under the Israeli-owned Starmer government — and, apparently, Israeli-owned parts of the judiciary too — no legal contortion is off-limits when it comes to protecting the “rights” of an Israeli arms company to profit, unmolested, from manufacturing and delivering weapons to be used in an ongoing genocide.

How far we have sunk. Where once defendants in cases involving weapons sabotage, genocide and people’s consciences were allowed to speak about why they did what they did, and juries were able to acquit them (which they often did, as I discussed in my article last summer, Why We Are All Palestine Action, and Why Direct Action to Prevent Genocide Is the Opposite of Terrorism), now they are not only ruthlessly silenced, but also ruthlessly punished above and beyond what is presented in court.

One wonders — from a position in which the government is already pushing for the widespread removal of juries in trials— what still remains of the jury system when such punitive deviousness is already in place. As a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries explained, “The public will be astonished to learn that in the British justice system protesters can now be convicted of criminal damage for disrupting an arms factory and then be sentenced as ‘terrorists’ without having been convicted of terror charges and with this having been kept secret from the jury.”

Increasing clampdowns on “jury equity” under the Tories and now under Labour

Defend Our Juries is an activist group defending “jury equity”, the right of jurors to deliver verdicts based on their consciences, having heard all the reasons why defendants took the actions they did, and in spite of directions by judges that there is no available defence.

The group came into being after the previous Tory government, under two aggressively authoritarian home secretaries, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, passed punitive laws designed to prevent meaningful protest, and to inflict maximum judicial damage, including prison sentences, on climate activists who dared to disrupt traffic to urge the government to implement the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that they were already legally obliged to undertake, and on those seeking racial justice, whose actions began when they dared to topple a statue of the notorious slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Harbour.

In seeking to secure convictions, activist judges then began preventing defendants from explaining to juries why they did what they did, and it was in this context that Defend Our Juries first emerged, as they faced the wrath of judges — and sometimes arrest — simply for holding up placards outside courtrooms that declared, “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience.”

Under the Starmer government, the authoritarianism has only increased. The decision by Yvette Cooper to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was a sickening overreach of her powers, undermining the meaning of terrorism by equating criminal damage with an intent to cause harm to civilians for a political end, which would be any sensible person’s definition of terrorism, and is also the view of respected UN Special Rapporteurs.

In the Filton 6 case, Mr. Justice Johnson had refused, as the Guardian described it, to “allow the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage.” In a ruling on 21 April, he said the defendants could not provide evidence of their motivations, including “their reasons for joining Palestine Action, their beliefs about Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel for use in the war in Gaza, their views about the actions of Israel in Gaza or its legality or their purpose in causing damage to property at the factory beyond an intention to destroy it or any other evidence which is irrelevant to the issues which the jury are required to determine.”

In addition, Mr. Justice Johnson had already combined his silencing of any mention of Israel by the defendants with his own specific decision to focus on Israel himself as a breathtakingly cynical way of causing maximum damage to the defendants.

In a hearing in March 2025, he focused on Section 1(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which describes “terrorism” as “the use or threat of action” that “is designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation.” He noted that the defence barrister Rajiv Menon KC and others had “strongly argued that influencing government was not the purpose of the action”, and that “the purpose of the action was to damage weapons and save lives.”

He added, “I accept that this was one motivating factor”, but also claimed that this “does not mean that another purpose was not to damage property to be made available to the Israeli government and thereby influence the Israeli government.”

All for Israel

So there we have it. Terrorism is being wheeled out not in connection with the criminal damage caused by the Filton 6 to disable Elbit’s genocidal weapons (although Mr. Justice Johnson is also eyeing up Section 1(2)(b) of the Terrorism Act, which, in an undefined manner, lists “serious damage to property” as an action that may constitute terrorism), but because the activists allegedly dared to try to “influence the Israeli government”, even though Israel has been condemned for engaging a genocide by a roll call of international bodies and genocide experts, and even though Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Justice Johnson’s master and the master of the Labour government, cannot even visit them to congratulate them of their devious and dedicated work on his behalf, because he has an outstanding arrest warrant against him, issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and cannot travel to any of the 125 countries worldwide, including the UK, who have signed up to the Rome Statute establishing the Court since it was adopted in 1998.

What’s next? Are the more than 3,300 people arrested for holding up placards opposing Israel’s genocide and supporting Palestine Action also to be charged and found guilty of “the use or threat of action” that “is designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation”?

Are all of us who have also opposed Israel’s genocide in our writing, and in other protests, also to be rounded up and charged on the same basis?

Does our government, and parts of the UK judiciary, really expect that we will all stay cowed and silent as they seek to establish that, in the UK, it is not permissible to criticize Israel for engaging in a genocide, not because of the usual tired excuse that criticizing Israel in any way is “antisemitic”, but because it will now be perceived as an act of terrorism?

The answer, of course, is a resounding no. The sentencing takes place at Woolwich Crown Court on June 12, when, I expect, Mr. Justice Johnson will not find a warm welcome for his legal deviousness on behalf of a foreign country committing a genocide. 18 more Filton activists are still awaiting trial, and it is unthinkable that they may also face similar convictions if Mr. Justice Johnson gets his way, as he seeks to infect the whole judicial system with his dangerous legal deviousness.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

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