Four Palestine Action activists have been found guilty of raiding an Israeli defence firm’s UK site and destroying equipment with sledgehammers and crowbars in a bid to shut the factory down.
Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani were in a prison van that crashed into shutters at the Elbit Systems factory in Bristol in the early hours of August 6, 2024. The activists, all wearing red boilersuits, then set about destroying property inside the factory before clashing with security guards and police who tried to stop the raid.
Head, 30, was driving the prison van that was used as a “battering ram” to break into the facility, Woolwich Crown Court was told. The raid had been “meticulously organised” and was intended to cause “as much damage as possible and obtain information about the company”, said prosecutor Deanna Heer.
The activists used sledgehammers and crowbars that they had brought with them to destroy computers, drones and other equipment, and used fire extinguishers to spray red paint across the walls and floor. The group caused an estimated £1 million of damage during the raid, a court was told.
Head, Corner, Kamio and Rajwani were each found guilty of criminal damage after a jury deliberated for more than 14 hours. Two other activists, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, who had been charged with criminal damage, were found not guilty. Corner was also found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm by a majority of 11 to one. He was cleared of grievous bodily harm with intent.
The court heard that when police arrived at the factory, Corner, 23, used his seven-pound sledgehammer to strike Sgt Evans twice on the back, leaving her with a fractured spine and afraid that she had been paralysed. They claimed their purpose was to “dismantle drones and weaponry” which they believed would be used to kill people.
The defendants argued that the escalation in their clashes with security and police was not part of the plan, and insisted they had a justification for causing the damage to equipment. Corner, a former linguistics and philosophy student at Oxford University, told the trial it “seemed reasonable to do something” after he heard one of his fellow activists screaming, and believed they were being hurt by security guards.
Sgt Evans was unable to return to work for three months as she recovered from the spinal injury. She told the court she remains on restricted duties and still experiences back pain more than 20 months on.
Footage of the incident recorded on a security guard's body-worn camera, which was played to the jury, appeared to show him telling the defendants they were “going to be doing criminal damage”. Kamio, 30, who was a nursery teacher at a forest school at the time of the break-in, could be heard responding: “We’re... doing that.”
In more footage shown to the jury, another police officer, PC Peter Adams, could be seen tasering Kamio before arresting and attempting to handcuff her as she cried out that he was hurting her. As Sgt Evans assisted Pc Adams, Corner swung a sledgehammer towards her and struck her in the lumbar region of her back, the court heard.
Corner then lifted the sledgehammer and brought it down towards Sgt Evans a second time. Sgt Evans told the court during her evidence that she believed her spine could have been “shattered”, and feared she may have been “paralysed”.
The six accused held hands in the dock as their verdicts were delivered. Head burst into tears as her guilty verdict was read out. The convictions come at the end of a retrial, 21 months after the defendants were first charged.
At their first trial, all six defendants were cleared by a jury of aggravated burglary, and Rajwani, Ms Rogers and Mr Devlin were acquitted of violent disorder. The first jury deliberated for 36 hours and 34 minutes but could not reach verdicts on the criminal damage charges, the allegation that Corner inflicted grievous bodily harm on Police Sergeant Kate Evans, and violent disorder counts against Head, Corner, and Kamio.
Woolwich Crown Court was told at the time that discussions in the jury room had become “intense”. Jurors had been warned not to let their views on the conflict in the Middle East influence them, and were later told to ignore signs near the court with statements such as: “Jury equity is when a jury acquits someone on moral grounds.”
Similar posters were held near the court on Tuesday, but their contents were not mentioned to jurors when Mr Justice Johnson reminded them to consider only the evidence they had heard in the trial in the course of reaching their verdicts.
