Palestine Action Activists Cleared by UK Court After Charges Over Elbit Arms Protests
February 6, 2026
A UK court clears Palestine Action activists accused of targeting an Israeli arms company.
The verdict is clear:
protest is not terrorism.
Solidarity is not a crime.
You can raid activists.
You can smear them.
But you can’t jail the truth forever.
Justice doesn’t always show up
but today, it did.
@channel4news
#PalestineAction #UKCourts #ProtestIsNotACrime #freepalestine #fyp
English Script:
Emerging after 18 months in custody, one of the most emotive and divisive trials in recent memory, with a jury just as torn. As it was in the early hours of August 6th last year, that six members of Palestine Action crashed through a warehouse door in a retired police van and into a factory based in Filton, near Bristol, owned by the subsidiary of an Israeli arms firm, Elbit Systems. Emerging dressed in red jumpsuits and carrying sledgehammers, they filmed themselves smashing equipment they believed was to be used in Gaza before being confronted by three security guards. The police arrived moments later. The prosecution argued the six defendants were meticulously organized and there to cause as much damage as possible, carrying weapons to threaten or if necessary, harm anyone who’d got in their way. If you swing at once for me, it’s really serious. The defense instead said they hadn’t expected to be confronted by security guards and were completely out of their depth. All six were accused of aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder. But today at Willetts Crown Court, all six were found not guilty of aggravated burglary, with three of them Jordan Devlin, Fatma Rajani and Zoe Rodgers found not guilty of violent disorder on all other counts, the jury was hung, including on the additional count of GBH against Samuel Corner.
Get your hands out now! Conor was accused of fracturing the spine of Police Sergeant Kate Evans, seen here at the top of the screen. The defense lawyer for the 23 year old argued that he had chemical sprayed his eyes, but he never meant to use violence and was trying to protect a codefendant who you see here shouting out during an altercation with another police officer.
He approaches Evans as she assessed the arrest on all fours, bringing the sledgehammer down on her back. PS Evans told the court she had to take three months off work after an X-ray showed a lumbar spine fracture and that she was still on restricted duties a year later. She said corner had told her following his handcuffing that she was complicit in genocide. All six defendants argued that they’d set out only to damage weapons and stop the factory operating. All, apart from Samuel Conor, were released on bail today. Their supporters gathered outside the court.
Now, the defendants have already served 18 months in prison without a single conviction, I think we can all agree that that effectively is enough punishment for the people who were never even convicted.
There was a fiery legal debate at the heart of this trial over intention. One defense barrister compared his client to the suffragettes. Another said hers had been acting out of compassion for the people of Gaza. And then towards the end of the trial, a note was passed from jury to judge asking whether if the defendants had genuinely thought they were saving lives by breaking equipment, they could be found not guilty of criminal damage.
The judge said no and repeated what he said at the outset of the trial that the case must be judged on the evidence alone, regardless of whether the defendants or the jury for that matter, believed that they were morally justified. Today’s case is a blow for the CPS, which will spend the next week deciding whether or not to seek a retrial. A further 18 defendants are yet to be tried this year on charges related to the alleged break in at Elbit Systems, and a further five over an alleged break in at an RAF base. Several have been on hunger strike to protest their bail conditions. Last August the Home Office banned the organization under terror legislation, making it a crime to support them.
Well, the proscription is not about protests around Palestine or Gaza, where we had, I think, tens of thousands of people protesting lawfully just this weekend about some of the horrendous events that we’ve seen in the Middle East. Instead, proscription is about one narrow group that has been involved in violent attacks, including injuries, including weapons.
Since then, according to Amnesty International, more than 2700 people have been arrested, a move described as disturbing by the UN human rights chief, who said terror laws had been misused to encompass conduct already criminal under the law. Whether the proscription was lawful or not is being considered by British courts and a judicial review, with a decision expected within weeks. Just as this, the first of several trials, ends in deadlock.
