The Renewed Ban on Palestine Action Confirms Legal Overreach in the Designation of Terrorism
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In a dispiriting ruling yesterday, the Court of Appeal in London overturned a ruling in February, by the High Court, that the government’s proscription of the direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, which was passed by Parliament last July, was unlawful.
The High Court’s ruling, in response to a judicial review submitted by Huda Ammori, one of Palestine Action’s two co-founders, repudiated the two counts on which the High Court had ruled the proscription unlawful.
Garden Court Chambers, whose barristers represented Huda Ammori at the judicial review in February, explained that these two counts were, firstly, that the Court “upheld the Claimant’s challenge that the Home Secretary failed to comply with her own policy when making the decision to proscribe Palestine Action”, and, secondly, that “proscription breached the rights of Freedom of Expression and Assembly as protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Broken Justice: Filton 6 Activists to Be Sentenced on Terrorism Charges That Were Not Disclosed to the Jury
Please click on either of the ‘Donate’ or ‘Buy’ buttons below (via PayPal or Stripe) to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist over the next three months. To get links to all my work in your inbox, please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.
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.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
