Palestine action activists spared terrorist sentences

Five Palestine Action activists in the United Kingdom will not be sentenced under terrorism laws, a judge has ruled.

Brendon O’Hagan, 28, Amanda Kelly, 31, Hmeera Atiqnisar, 31, Mohammed Malik, 28, and Alma Yaniv, 70, were convicted in June of causing damage worth 212,000 pounds ($290,000) to a branch of Barclays Bank in the town of Burnley in Lancashire in August 2024.

The activists were protesting against the bank’s shareholdings in the Israeli defence company Elbit Systems.

On Friday at Preston Crown Court, as Judge Robert Altham announced his ruling.
scores of their supporters gathered outside erupted into cheers and pro-Palestine chants.Malik’s mother, Dove Malik, told Al Jazeera, “It’s a victory for us, it’s a victory for Palestine, it’s a victory for protesting … We are on the right side of history.”

In a joint statement, the activists said they were “extremely relieved that the court has seen sense and decided not to sentence us as terrorists”.

“This should never have been an option,” they said. “We were on trial for charges of criminal damage, for damaging some windows and spraying red paint on a Barclays branch.

At no point during the trial were we, or the jury, informed that, if convicted, we could face being sentenced as terrorists.”The five are due to be sentenced on September 4.

The activists were protesting against the bank’s shareholdings in the Israeli defence company Elbit Systems.

On Friday at Preston Crown Court, as Judge Robert Altham announced his ruling, scores of their supporters gathered outside erupted into cheers and pro-Palestine chants.

Malik’s mother, Dove Malik, told Al Jazeera, “It’s a victory for us, it’s a victory for Palestine, it’s a victory for protesting … We are on the right side of history.”In a joint statement, the activists said they were “extremely relieved that the court has seen sense and decided not to sentence us as terrorists”.

“This should never have been an option,” they said. “We were on trial for charges of criminal damage, for damaging some windows and spraying red paint on a Barclays branch.

At no point during the trial were we, or the jury, informed that, if convicted, we could face being sentenced as terrorists.”The five are due to be sentenced on September 4.

At the time of their verdicts, Palestine Action had not been proscribed as a terrorist group. Neither the defendants nor the jury were aware that terrorism charges might be involved.

However, following the verdicts, trial judge Philip Parry notified the defendants’ legal team that he intended to consider whether the offence carried a “terrorist connection”.

Parry made a similar move after circulating a ruling from a case in June, during which four Palestine Action activists convicted of criminal damage at Elbit Systems’ Filton site near Bristol were sentenced as terrorists nearly two years after their protest at Woolwich Crown Court in London.

Leading criminal lawyer Raj Chada, of the firm Hodge Jones & Allen, which has defended a number of Palestine Action activists, said “terrorist connection” laws date back years, but only appear to have been applied recently and solely in Palestine Action cases.

“Certainly, in our experience, using the law like this is very, very unusual and appears to be being used to target Palestine Action activists whose offence predates the banning of the group,” he said.

“To the best of our knowledge, the only time this law was used in relation to direct action protest groups was against those convicted at Filton,” said Chada, outlining laws used by prosecutors to target the offence rather than the individual or group that had carried it out.

According to the rights group Defend our Juries, more than 3,500 people – many over the age of 60 – have been arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action after it was proscribed by politicians in July 2025, placing it on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

Many of these arrests have arisen through repeated mass sit-ins in central London’s Parliament Square, where protesters held signs reading, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”