Palestine Action activists to be sentenced as terrorists without jury’s knowledge

Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.

Last Tuesday, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court convicted Leona Kamio, 30, Samuel Corner, 23, Fatema Rajwani, 21, and Charlotte Head, 29, of criminal damage in connection with a raid on an Elbit Systems plant near Bristol on 6 August 2024. Two other activists, Jordan Devlin and Zoe Rogers, were cleared of the charges.

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.

Sentencing with a terrorism connection could mean the defendants face aggravated sentences. Most of them have already served 18 months on remand.

The use of terrorism legislation relates to property damage, with the court relying on the “serious property damage” clause under s1(2)(b) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which remains legally undefined.

The court must also find that the action was taken to influence the government or an "international governmental organisation", under s1(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act. 

In a preparatory ruling in March 2025, presiding judge Justice Johnson ruled that there appeared to be a “terrorist connection” in the case because the activists were attempting to influence the Israeli government by restricting their access to weapons.

Judge Johnson said: “On s1(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act 2000, Rajiv Menon KC and others strongly argued that influencing government was not the purpose of the action - the purpose of the action was to damage weapons and save lives. I accept that this was one motivating factor - but that 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.” 

Rajwani, Head, Kamio and Corner await sentencing on 12 June. 

The defendants were all being retried for the offences after the jury in the initial trial cleared them of charges of aggravated burglary. In the previous trial, Rajwani, Devlin and Rogers were also found not guilty of violent disorder charges, while the jury did not return a verdict on the same charge for the other three defendants. 

Blacklisted words

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 restrictions were such that the defendants resorted to dropping their lawyers and making their closing speeches themselves when the judge circulated a draft order, seen by MEE, imposing restrictions on closing speeches.

These stipulated that the defence could not invite the jury to rely in reaching their verdicts “on matters that the court has ruled are irrelevant," including “Elbit’s activities in manufacturing weapons and supplying them to Israel,” “the nature of the property,” and the “defendants’ beliefs that weapons and other technology” at the factory would be “used to kill or injure others including children”.

Head told jurors in her closing comments that “after some decisions made by the court I no longer feel like they are permitted to represent me in a way that does us all justice”.

In her closing speech, Rogers noted that throughout the three-week-long trial, jurors “might have noticed certain words have been blacklisted, that until our speeches the word ‘genocide’ hasn’t been said once”.

“It's almost as if topics of conversation have been banned,” Rogers said.

“The prosecution knows full well that we are right that this factory is supplying weapons to Israel to be used in Gaza,” she said, adding that “they are choosing to suppress the truth rather than contest it”.

Rogers emphasised to the jurors that she had a “whole lot to lose by going to prison”, and that she actually intended to be arrested going into the factory.

She told jurors that to find her and her co-defendants guilty of criminal damage, they “have to be sure”.