Palestine Action has won a UK High Court challenge over its proscription in the UK as a terror group.
The ban was “disproportionate” and should be overturned, the High Court ruled.
However, the organisation remains banned as a terror group to allow further arguments and to give the government time to consider an appeal, judges decided.
About 100 people gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice in central London began cheering and chanting “Free Palestine” after the ruling was announced. Many carried signs that read: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
The Metropolitan Police cautioned that it still remains a criminal offence to express support for Palestine Action, but signalled it would not carry out arrests at protests, but would gather evidence for potential enforcement at a later date.
In a summary of the High Court’s decision, Dame Victoria Sharp said the group's co-founder Huda Ammori won her challenge on two grounds. In a 46-page judgment, Dame Victoria, sitting with Mr Justice Swift and Mrs Justice Steyn, said the Home Secretary had made a “significant” error in breaching her own policies.
She said: “At its core, Palestine Action is an organisation that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality. A very small number of its actions have amounted to terrorist action.
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale and persistence to warrant proscription.”
The government will appeal against the decision, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood confirmed. In a statement, she said she “disagreed with the notion that banning this terrorist organisation was disproportionate”.
“The proscription of Palestine Action followed a rigorous and evidence-based decision-making process, endorsed by parliament. The proscription does not prevent peaceful protest in support of the Palestinian cause, another point on which the court agrees,” she said.
Ms Ammori was taking legal action against the Home Office over the decision of Yvette Cooper, who was then the home secretary, to proscribe the group under the Terrorism Act 2000. The ban, which took effect on July 5 last year, made membership of, or support for, the direct-action group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Ms Ammori hailed today's decision as a “monumental victory” over an action that would “forever be remembered as one of the most extreme attacks on free speech in recent British history”. She said the ban was a “Trumpian abuse of power which would have seen this Labour government proscribe the Suffragettes”.
She said: “This ban was unlawful, resulting in the unlawful arrest of nearly 3,000 people – among them priests, vicars, former magistrates and retired doctors – under terrorism laws for simply sitting in silence while holding signs reading: ‘I oppose genocide – I support Palestine Action’.”
At a hearing late last year, barristers for Ms Ammori told the court that the decision to ban the group was unlawful and should be quashed, with Palestine Action being the first “direct-action civil disobedience organisation that does not advocate for violence” to be proscribed as a terrorist group.
The Home Office defended the challenge, with its barristers telling the hearing in London that the move has not prevented people from protesting against Israel’s actions in Gaza or in support of Palestinians.
Ms Ammori began her legal challenge against the decision in June, before failing in a last-minute bid on July 4 to block the ban from taking effect. In October, the Home Office lost a Court of Appeal bid to block the challenge from proceeding.
Opening the full hearing of the challenge, Raza Husain KC, for Ms Ammori, told the High Court that the decision was an “ill-considered, discriminatory, due process-lacking, authoritarian abuse of statutory power … that is alien to the basic tradition of common law and the European Convention on Human Rights”.
He said: “Direct action and civil disobedience are not simply to be tolerated, but valued. It is an honourable tradition, both in our common law and in any liberal democracy with a developed understanding of the rule of law. We say (Ms Cooper) missed this, in setting up a dichotomy between so-called good protesters and bad protesters, those that obeyed the law and those that breached it.”
Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said the ban “strikes a fair balance between interference with the rights of the individuals affected and the interests of the community”.
In written submissions, he said: “Whilst it has at all times been open to supporters of Palestine Action to protest against its proscription without breaking the law, certain individuals have instead repeatedly sought to flout Palestine Action’s proscription.”
Sir James added that the aim is “stifling organisations concerned in terrorism and for members of the public to face criminal liability for joining or supporting such organisations”. He continued: “That serves to ensure proscribed organisations are deprived of the oxygen of publicity as well as both vocal and financial support.”
