Victory as prosecution fail to secure a conviction against those present at Filton25 trial 2

• Today the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on all charges against Aleksandra Herbich, Madeleine Norman, Hannah Davidson, Teuta Hoxha, Ian Sanders, Yulia Brigadirova, and William Plastow.
• Sean Middlebrough was tried in absentia, having not returned to custody after temporary bail in November 2025, having already served 458 days in prison without conviction - more than twice the legal remand limit
• The eight defendants collectively spent up to 18 months on remand before trial, in every case exceeding the legal limit· The prosecution centred on allegations that defendants organised and provided reconnaissance for the August 2024 action at Elbit Systems' Filton facility, which caused over £1 million in damage to Israeli military drone technology

London — Once again, a jury of their peers was unable to convict any of the latest pro Palestine activists who acted on their conscience to save lives. During the trial, the Judge also dismissed the charge of violent disorder against William Plastow. Today's verdict is the latest chapter in a prosecution that has put Palestine activism on trial – despite using the first Filton 25 prosecutions as a precedent: that organising resistance to Britain's complicity in genocide can be treated as terrorism - the outcome was another embarrassing defeat for the establishment, which has thrown all its resources into convicting them. 

The latest accused were not even at the Filton site on the night of the action. As a result a charge of joint enterprise was engineered, of assisting or encouraging the action at Elbit Systems' Filton weapons factory on August 6th 2026, which led to the destruction of 40 Israeli weapons, including quadcopter drones. Elbit Systems is Israel's largest weapons firm, which produces 85% of Israel's military drone fleet, used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza. 

The prosecution's case rested on the claim that buying tools and conducting reconnaissance made them equally responsible for what happened inside. That framing - expansive, elastic, designed to maximise the number of people who can be caught in the net - is itself a feature of the counter-terrorism architecture being deployed here. The wider the net, the greater the deterrent. The bigger the deterrent, the stronger the message to anyone else considering direct action against Britain's role in genocide. 

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE, said:"A jury, given the narrow set of facts the court permitted them to hear, has declined to convict all defendants present. That is a massive win - and it belongs to the defendants, not to the system that put them through 18 months of pre-trial detention, and kept a terrorism designation hidden in reserve throughout. The architecture remains. The laws that built it must be abolished."

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