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
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."
- Charlotte Head, Sam Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Zainab Rajwani were convicted of criminal damage following a retrial at Woolwich Crown Court
- Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin were found not guilty of criminal damage
- Sam Corner was found not guilty of GBH with intent - the most serious charge against any defendant - but convicted of the lesser charge of inflicting GBH
- The defendants were originally held on remand for up to 17 months before their first trial, which returned no convictionsThe retrial took place against a backdrop of judicial controversy, including the unexplained removal of Judge Martin Chamberlain - widely regarded as fair and independent - from related Palestine Action proceedings
London — CAGE welcomes the acquittals of Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, and the jury's rejection of the most serious charge against Sam Corner. However there are serious concerns about convictions of the four other defendants, because the jury were prevented from hearing evidence about the political context of their actions. The convictions were secured the defendants were prohibited from placing before the jury the fact that they acted to stop weapons being used in a genocide.
The Defendants addressed the jury after dismissing their lawyers to give their own closing speeches, and named the weapons being built by Elbit, their intended use in agenocide, and the failure of every avenue they had tried before taking direct action. In her statement, Charlotte Head told the jury:
"The government doesn't listen when people like you and me ask nicely. They have too much invested, both politically and financially, to act on a moral basis. We tried asking nicely and playing by their rules and they flat out ignored us. I don't believe that wanting to stop human suffering, to stop tens of thousands of innocent people being killed is a fringe belief. I believe it is a commonly held view that underpins what it means to live in a just and humane society.
Leona Kamio asked the jury where Elbit was - why there were no witnesses, why there was no inventory of what was damaged. “If this was a shop that we’d broken into,” she said, “you’d expect the owner to come to court. You’d expect them to list all the items that were damaged. So where is that information about the weapons we dismantled?”And she was direct about what the prosecution’s silence on Palestinian lives meant: “I don’t understand how anyone could say the law would be incapable of providing protection to anyone - unless they don’t see Palestinians as human beings.”
Zoe Rogers, who was acquitted today, told the jury she would not hold it against them whatever they decided, because they had not been shown the whole truth. “How can I,”she said, “when you have been kept so in the dark.” She was certain of one thing regardless: “I can say with absolute certainty that this is the best thing I have ever done, because there is a good chance that because of our action that night, innocent lives were saved.” That success is one that no jury can take away from them.
Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE, said:
"Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin walk free, and the jury refused to convict Sam Corner of the most serious charge he faced - that matters, and we celebrate it. But we will not pretend that today's outcome represents justice. The court constructed a trial in which the jury was denied the very facts that explain why these defendants acted. When you remove genocide from the courtroom, you remove the only context that makes this case comprehensible. The convictions that resulted are a product of that exclusion - not of any genuine finding that what these people did was wrong. This conviction is unsafe and the result of an unfair trial. The judiciary and political establishment who engineered this result stand accused today."
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