State exploited terror powers to manipulate Filton jury to secure a conviction

• Reporting restrictions on the Filton24 retrial of the first 6 have been lifted, revealing that four defendants convicted of criminal damage - Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Zainab Rajwani - are to be sentenced as terrorists despite facing no terrorism charges
• This is believed to be the first case in British legal history where a court will attempt to sentence activists taking direct action as “terrorists”
• The jury that convicted them was prevented from learning that terrorism connection could be imposed; Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin were acquitted of all charges
• Defendants were banned from informing the jury of their motivations, Elbit's role in genocide, or the nature of the weapons they dismantled - under threat of contempt charges
• The original judge was removed after granting a defendant bail; his replacement, Mr Justice Johnson - a career-long defender of the British state, police forces and intelligence agencies - refused to dismiss proceedings despite repeated prejudicial public statements by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper
• MP Zarah Sultana was forced to use parliamentary privilege to tell the British public what no media outlet could legally report

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London - Today's lifting of reporting restrictions on the Filton retrial, reveals how a judge was able to restrict a jury’s access to information, effectively manipulating a trial, to secure a conviction. This was enabled by the infrastructure of counter terrorism powers, passed largely to suppress dissent to the state’s foreign policy by exploiting fears and prejudices against Muslims. This revelation demonstrates the undoing of British justice at the behest of the security state.      

What that infrastructure looked like in practice was six people on trial, unable to speak the truth of why they were there, while a jury was asked to deliver a verdict on events it was deliberately prevented from understanding. They were not told about the genocide those weapons were destined to serve, and rather focus was only given on the damage that was done. They were not told about Elbit's role as the primary supplier of Israel's military technology, battle-tested on Palestinian civilians. They were not told that the defendants had spent years exhausting every legal and democratic avenue before walking through those gates. And they were not told, crucially, that a guilty verdict would expose the defendants to terrorism sentencing, despite no terrorism charges ever being brought. The jury decided four were guilty of criminal damage. What they did not know was that they were potentially deciding a terrorism case.

The state is stress-testing new machinery, of legislation introduced in 2021 that allows a terrorism connection to be added to any offence carrying a two-year minimum sentence, without a terrorism charge, without the jury's knowledge, and at the sole discretion of the judge. The Filton four are the first people in British legal history to face this mechanism for direct action. If it stands, it will be used again in similar cases. If this stands, the defendants could be given significantly longer prison sentences, and face severe restrictions on their lives following their release. 

Justice Johnson is a barrister who built his career defending MI6, the Ministry of Defence and police forces accused of cover-ups, torture and abuse - who defended West Midlands Police at the Hillsborough inquest, who argued that sexual relationships by undercover officers infiltrating protest groups could be legally authorised. He was appointed to preside over a case in which six people tried to stop a genocide. He dismissed the abuse of process application documenting systematic meetings between Elbit, the Home Office, the Attorney General's Office and the Israeli Embassy about the prosecution of Palestine Action activists. He stripped the defendants of their legal defences, and removed genocide from the courtroom. When he was done, Zarah Sultana had to stand in Parliament under parliamentary privilege just to tell the British public what had happened in a British court, because no journalist in the country could legally print it due to reporting restrictions.

It should now be clear to everyone that terrorism laws are a weapon for the security state to take over the judicial process, and overturn tradition and liberties acquired through citizen struggles over centuries. This is why CAGE has called for them to be abolished and for there to be a return to due process and fair trials procedures.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE, said:

"The terrorism sentencing connection must be dropped. The ban on Palestine Action must be lifted. And the terror laws being used to reframe conscience as criminality must be abolished. What is being built here is a legal architecture designed to make resistance through any means impossible.

A jury convicted four people of criminal damage without being told they were deciding a terrorism case. They were denied the defendants' motivations, denied the evidence of genocide, denied the nature of the weapons dismantled, and denied the knowledge that their verdict could send people to prison as terrorists. Johnson spent his career defending the institutions this case put on trial. That is what this state does: it rewards those who serve it and destroys those who resist it."