Richard Bell #rejoinEU #FBPE 🇪🇺💙 🇵🇸

Theologian, Green republican, lover of the EU, who wants to end the 'special relationship'. Free Palestine! Own views.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

From a leading British lawyer, for Zeteo UK today:
https://t.co/kVMNO16e7I

[Peter Tatchell @PeterTatchell]

After Palestine protest at Appeal Court, I went for a coffee in Pret, far up the road in The Strand

As I got my coffee, I turned to find myself surrounded by police. They demanded I show my placard & filmed it

My placard is not unlawful. This was intimidation. POLICE STATE!

[Huda Ammori @HudaAmmori]

I will appeal to the Supreme Court and take it up to the European Court of Human Rights, if needs be.

However, we clearly can not rely on the legal system which completely stitched up the Filton case, and now the Palestine Action ban.

This fight can only be won by the people.

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

MISSING COMPLETELY from the Court of Appeal judgment was that
1. Palestine Action was seeking to end a genocide
2. The weapons they destroyed at Elbit were intended for use in that genocide

The Court of Appeal judges will be damned by history for siding with the genocidaires

[Jenny Jones @GreenJennyJones]

Today with very brave campaigners, outside Court, waiting for the ruling that eventually went against us; the judges upheld the Govt's appeal.
We now have a very repressive law where the Home Sec can spot *future* crime and proscribe campaign groups before they become terrorists.

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

"This government is treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or Al Qaeda, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong. Frankly I'm deeply ashamed"

Labour peer Peter Hain in the Lords in July last year

[Amnesty UK @AmnestyUK]

Today's ruling by the Court of Appeal is deeply disappointing.

This case remains about much more than one group.

What’s important for all of us to understand is that proscription is one of the strongest powers the government has.

Treating protest as terrorism leaves the door wide open for governments to suppress other protest movements in the future.

We have long said that the banning of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is a grave misuse of counter-terrorism powers with serious consequences for human rights.

It is a huge overreach to treat direct action protest as terrorism.

Amnesty will continue to defend the freedoms that allow people to speak out and hold the powerful to account.

[Richard Bell #rejoinEU #FBPE 🇪🇺💙 🇵🇸 @RichardHBell]

@ErrolHeather @HeidiBachram @HelenRo41328161 Good question. I'm not entirely sure who finances the IDF but the Christian Zionists in the USA must one group who ultimately support them.

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

The Court of Appeal have upheld the government’s authoritarian ban on Palestine Action.

Members of the group or people who support them face up to 14 years in prison – even for holding up a sign.

The government must stop its crackdown on protest and defend our right to speak up.

[John McDonnell @johnmcdonnellMP]

Parliament should reverse the decision to proscribe Palestine Action urgently before we see large numbers of elderly people in particular being dragged before our courts. Classifying protest through direct action as terrorism brings Parliament & our judicial system into disrepute

[Real Media @RealMediaGB]

As we reported last month, the jury in the retrial of the Filton 6 delivered a bizarre verdict, singling out Jordan Devlin and Zoe Rogers for acquittal while finding the other four guilty of criminal damage.

The verdict was unusual because all six admitted they had committed criminal damage and gave similar reasons for doing so.

Real Media spoke to the two activists who were acquitted by the jury while their four friends and fellow activists face sentencing with a terrorism connection. We also speak to the mother of one of the four, who questions a justice system that allows this.

Watch below or visit: https://t.co/1scQ8tPA0r

@freefilton24 @Prisoners4Pal @CAGEintl @DefendOurJuries

[Asa Winstanley @AsaWinstanley]

But not the violence, threats and intimidation directed at Palestinians in Palestine by their Israeli friends every single day.

[Defend Our Juries @DefendOurJuries]

Sir Jonathon Porritt MBE risked arrest under the Terrorism Act yesterday outside Woolwich Crown Court as the sentencing of four direct actionists was being determined.

Met Police managed to arrest less than half of those holding the “offending” due to the sheer level of support.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

I'd never condone violence against a police officer - this is utterly dishonest.

The jury weren't judging them on a terrorism offence. This is an awful sleight of hand.

The creeping encroachment of terror laws onto protest & removal of our juries should worry all of us.

[Chris Williamson @DerbyChrisW]

The 1960s apartheid govt of South Africa labelled the ANC as terrorists and used a compliant judiciary to suppress their activists and supporters. Today's British govt uses the same tactics against Palestine Action and its supporters.

Here's a photo of Judge Quartus de Wet who sentenced Nelson Mandela to life in prison, alongside Judge Jeremy Johnson who yesterday sentenced four Palestine Action activists as terrorists, even though they were never charged with terrorism, because such a charge would've been thrown out by every jury in the land.

Johnson would have fitted in very well in South Africa's apartheid regime.

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

Today four activists face terror-related sentences for taking direct action against an Elbit Systems weapons factory in Filton, Bristol - a factory that makes drones sent to the genocidal apartheid state of Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza.

Back in April, I warned in Parliament that jurors would not be told terrorism sentences could follow a criminal damage conviction.

No terrorism charges were ever brought. The proscription against Palestine Action has since been ruled unlawful. The defendants were even prevented from telling the jury they acted to stop genocide.

This is a Labour government defending Israeli death factories and stripping away all of our fundamental rights.

Everyone who cares about our democracy should be outraged.

[Roger Gall @Shambles151]

"Judge Johnson kept the jury in the dark of his plans to sentence the four as terrorists. This is the first time in British legal history that anyone has been sentenced as a terrorist for damaging property."

Please RT until this is both the 1st & last time.

Thank you.

[John McDonnell @johnmcdonnellMP]

Scale of sentences on the 4 young people who took direct action against the arms supplier to Israel is truly shocking. To impose years of imprisonment for protesting to save lives in Gaza is unjust, especially sentencing on terrorist grounds they were never convicted of by a jury

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Jeremy Johnson - in 50 years time this will be the only 1.39 minutes of your life you'll be remembered for. It'll be played in genocide museums to sum up the complicity and callous brutality of the British state in the face of the slaughter of the Palestinian people - and the courage of those who opposed it.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

This is barbaric. They were not permitted to explain to the jury why they carried out the attack on the Elbit factory - which makes the weapons that kill Palestinian children. And the jury was never told they would be sentenced as terrorists. /1