Palestine Action campaigners seeking to lift ban rounded up in dawn raids

Counterterrorism police on Tuesday arrested five members of a campaign group calling for the UK government to lift its ban on direct action group Palestine Action, hours before a press conference announcing a protest on Saturday.

Defend Our Juries (DOJ) has called regular protests since the government moved to proscribe the group in July, with mounting numbers of participants arrested under the Terrorism Act for holding signs reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

According to London's Metropolitan Police, 114 people have been charged with Terrorism Act offences linked to Palestine Action support.

Over 500 people - most of them over the age of 60 - were arrested under the Terrorism Act at a previous action in London's Parliament Square on 9 August.

On 22 August, DOJ called for 1,000 people to pledge to participate in the upcoming protest, saying it would only go ahead if participant numbers reached that threshold.

Tuesday’s press conference, which was set to feature speakers including author Sally Rooney, was intended to announce that the threshold had been met and the protest would proceed.

But hours before the conference was due to start, DOJ reported that five of its “key spokespeople”, including former government lawyer Tim Crosland and law student Paddy Friend, had been rounded up in dawn raids and arrested under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Amnesty International condemned the arrest of DOJ members in raids on their homes as "incredibly concerning" and "a clear violation of international law".  

Kerry Moscogiuri, director of campaigns at Amnesty International UK, said the peaceful protests that the campaign group has organised in recent weeks are protected by international human rights law.

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"To think they run the risk of being imprisoned for up to 14 years is a terrifying example of the UK authorities' willingness to use authoritarian practices to silence dissent," she said.

DOJ said Saturday’s mass action will proceed despite the arrests, adding that, based on expressions of interest, they expect participant numbers to reach 1,500.

Friend recently told the BBC in an interview that his role in the protests “could ruin my career but I felt I had to do it”. 

Witnesses of his arrest said police had informed them that Friend had been arrested under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act because he had hosted a zoom call with other members of Defend Our Juries. 

The press conference has been rescheduled for Wednesday.

A spokesperson for DOJ denounced the arrests as “scandalous” and an “unprecedented assault on free speech”.

“The counter-terrorism police are clearly targeting people they perceive as organisers, and the key spokespeople arrested were told they were being arrested for hosting public Zoom calls,” they said.

“No one has been arrested for joining the Zoom calls - only the hosts - and we will be holding another Zoom call tonight ahead of our action on Saturday.”

Refusal to comply

Following the mass action in August, DOJ said it was pursuing methods of protest that would make mass arrests of peaceful demonstrators near impossible.

During the last protest, police operated a "street bail system", setting up “prisoner processing points” housed in pop-up gazebos on the streets of central London to deal with the volume of people arrested.

Now, DOJ is urging participants to refuse to comply with this system, noting that “it will not be practically possible for the police to arrest 1,000 non-compliant people on the same day”.

It said that, unlike the action on 9 August, which was scheduled to last one hour, Saturday’s protest will "last indefinitely”.

The UK government proscribed Palestine Action under anti-terror laws on 4 July, following an incident in which members broke into RAF Brize Norton and attacked with paint and crowbars two planes they said were “used for military operations in Gaza and across the Middle East”. 

The designation puts Palestine Action on a par with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group under British law, making it a criminal offence to show support for or invite support for the group, punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the Terrorism Act 2000.