Palestine Action activists jailed over factory raid

Four Palestine Action activists have been jailed after causing £1.2m of damage at a UK site of an Israel-based defence firm.

Charlotte Head, 30, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, and Fatema Rajwani, 21, were convicted of criminal damage in a retrial after they broke into the Elbit Systems factory near Bristol in August 2024.

They were sentenced as terrorists in what is believed to be a legal first in the UK. Mr Justice Johnson said their actions had aimed to influence the government.

Corner was jailed for seven years and eight months for criminal damage and inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police sergeant. The judge said he had no justification for the "extreme and gratuitous force" used.

Head, who drove the prison van into the compound, was sentenced to five years in prison, Kamio was also handed a five-year jail term, and Rajwani received a prison sentence of four years and eight months.

Corner was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm after he fractured Sgt Kate Evans' spine with a sledgehammer in the raid.

Due to the terrorist ruling, the offenders will not qualify for early release from prison provisions and the Parole Board will assess their risk to the public when it determines when they can be set free.

Head and Rajwani cried in the dock as Johnson passed his ruling.

Rajiv Menon KC, defending barrister for Head and leading for all the defendants, previously told the court the prosecution's application for the case to have a terrorist connection "undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system and amounts to chilling and creeping authoritarianism".

"It would be wholly wrong and unfair for this court to reach any conclusions as to the reasons or underlying motivations of the defendants in doing what they did given the prosecution applied for that evidence to be excluded," he said.

Menon pointed out that Head had been cleared of aggravated burglary during a first trial of the case, while prosecutors then dropped a charge of violent disorder before a second trial went ahead only on the criminal damage charge.

The barrister said it would be unprecedented for a defendant to be sentenced on the basis of a terrorist connection when found guilty of a non-violent offence.

Menon added that it would be "laughable" if any Palestine Action activist actually believed direct action would achieve the group's stated aim to "shut Elbit down".

He said activists in the raid on the Elbit Systems factory wanted to destroy equipment they believed would be sent to Israel and then used against Palestinians.

Deanna Heer KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said that the criminal damage at the Elbit factory had a "terrorism connection".

Under the law, anyone guilty of a standard offence can receive a longer sentence if a court rules that the manner in which the crime was committed could be said to meet the definition of terrorism.

The UK's definition of terrorism encompasses both acts of serious violence or serious damage to property which a court is sure were carried out to influence a government or a section of the public to advance a particular ideological cause.

Outside the court, 72 people were arrested after a demonstration supporting Palestine Action earlier.

Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the government in July last year.

The move was declared unlawful by the High Court in February, but the group has remained proscribed.