Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.
After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.
The game is rigged and the UK has decided it is an accomplice to crimes against humanity.
A bunch of the Labour top team are in the “Labour Friends of Israel” group. Starmer is in it, Streeting is in it. As is anybody else with a chance, because anyone else is in the “antisemite” group, and not allowed to do anything.
Don’t expect this to change. Farage or the Tories wouldn’t change it either.
Us and the septics set Israel up. It’s our little project, and we can’t do much apart from voting Green (who are now also smeared as antisemites and run by fundamentalist Muslims, despite being run by a gay Jew). Even then the US would prop them up forever. As long as oil is a thing, they need Israel to project power on the Middle East.
This is not new for the UK. They always pretended that they were on the side of law
so they’re trying to blame their accidental/deliberate act of accidental terrorism on the jury
they did not think this through
Yeah this is actually insane. DO NOT LET THIS GO.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Signs of a healthy legal system and society.
This from the same judge who tried to hold their lawyer in contempt and had it thrown out by a higher court in the span of, like, a day?
Indeed. judge “Justice Johnson” is the one doing all these wildly draconian moves to get Palestine Action convicted as terrorists.
His name is straight out of a comic bookJust in case you weren’t aware (and I’m not missing anything), judges in the UK are given the title of Justice in a way which admittedly does make it look like their first name
That makes more sense. Figured it was their real name because of the capitalization
Convicted for one crime and sentenced for another? Sounds like freedom and democracy!
Europe is starting to act a lot more like Nazi Germany & Nazi Israel. Wonder how many people are caught up in Netanyahu’s trafficking of minors. My guess is it is thousands… All those Christian Nationalists they invite over there.
How very draconian
That’s not normal…
Half of the UK parliament is chosen by the monarch. The other half is chosen through the problematic and undemocratic first past the post voting system. UK streets have CCTV everywhere. UK libel laws are extreme. The state-owned media defends pedophiles and transphobes, while the private media focuses on gossip and lies rather than reporting on the news (on top of also defending transphobes and pedophiles, of course).
It’s time for people to admit to themselves that the UK, especially England, is a dictatorship.
Half of the UK parliament is chosen by the monarch.
No.
The other half is chosen through the problematic and undemocratic first past the post voting system.
Yes.
UK streets have CCTV everywhere.
It’s not the CCTV you want to worry about. The CCTV is overwritten regularly and typically goes nowhere. It’s the internet-connected stuff you wanted to worry about, and the blanket surveillance by Google and meta. Carrying a smartphone and worrying about CCTV while you post pictures of yourself where LLMs can scrape them is utterly irrational.
It’s time for people to admit to themselves that the UK, especially England, is a dictatorship.
No, just a half-police state. But at least you tend not to get murdered by the police for being black in charge of a vehicle in the UK, and the healthcare is free.
This, though, this is AWFUL and they went OUT OF THEIR WAY to deny these people justice. If you deny the defendants the right to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you have denied them justice.
So you’re just going to pretend that the house of lords don’t exist?
The House of Lords appointment process is bizarre. Parties sell the seats to political donors, the church still seats lords and the monarch has influence but not control over the process. They also just reformed out the last hereditary peers. Its not entirely democratic but not that monarchist either. Its probably best described as an oligarchist institution imo.
That’s somehow even worse and more corrupt than I thought it was.
I think thats a somewhat fair take, but its definitely not a system dominated by the monarch. The ruling political and economic classes are in the drivers seat.
I’m not going to pretend that the monarch chooses them. The prime minister chooses them and has done for a looooooong time.
Some of the other errors in your post have been pointed out already, but i wanted to mention one additional one - there is no state media in the UK
as for camping it a dictatorship, you’ve got good comic timing on that one
BBC
Yes, i figured that’s what you meant. I assume that your knowledge of the BBC is as well-informed as your knowledge of the House of Lords.
The BBC is not state media
“The Chairman and the non-executive members for the nations are appointed by HM The King on the recommendation of Ministers while the other members of the Board are appointed by the BBC through the Board’s Nominations and Governance committee.”
“The BBC is primarily funded by a compulsory annual TV license fee paid by UK households.”
That’s a state media, regardless of what it may view itself as.
Edit: Also, I wasn’t wrong about the House of Lord being dictatorial. The things I was wrong about was the complexity of the dictatorship. Instead of it all being chosen by the monarch, some of it is chosen through bribes, some by theocrats and some by politicians. None of the seats are directly chosen by the people, like in a democracy, and that was the whole damn point!
State media means that the government has editorial control, which it does not with the BBC. If they were they wouldn’t have broken stories around the Pincher scandal which was the downfall of the Johnson government, for example
And state media is funded by the state. As you correctly quoted, the BBC is funded by the public
As with your comments on the Lords, it seems like you’ve heard some reactionary soundbites and regurgitated them as fact because they fit into your world view, rather than taking the time to learn how the things you’re criticising actually work and forming your opinion from there
United Klandom
It must have been work to conceal this from the jury.
No wonder they’re trying to do away with these pesky jury trials.
It really will help to make examples of people with minimal effort.
Bonus points for setting it up just in time for what is very possibly going to be a fascistic government.
