Four Palestine Action campaigners are to launch appeals against their sentences.
Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani broke into an Israeli-owned arms manufacturing plant in the UK in 2024. They were convicted this year of causing criminal damage to the Elbit Systems site in Filton, near Bristol.
They became the first protesters in Britain to be sentenced as terrorists despite none of them being charged or convicted of a terrorism offence. This was because the presiding judge, Justice Jeremy Johnson, said the incident had the "appearance" of a terrorism connection because the property damage was caused with the intent to influence the government and to advance a political cause.
Corner was given an additional sentence after he was found to have caused grievous bodily harm without intent, after hitting a police woman on the back with a sledgehammer. He was jailed for seven years and eight months, while Head and Kamio were jailed for five years and Rajwani for four years and eight months.
The appeal is to be made on three grounds. Firstly, that the damage to the Elbit Systems site did not meet the threshold for an act of terrorism. Lawyers are also to argue that the group were not seeking to influence the government with their actions, but to damage weapons that could be used by Israel in its war on Gaza. The activists were motivated by a “humanitarian” cause, rather than political or ideological beliefs.
The appeal is to claim that the definition of serious property damage in the Terrorism Act is vague, with insufficient case law to help constrain it. “One of the issues that is at the heart of the case is whether there was serious damage to property,” said Simon Natas, of ITN Solicitors, which is representing the four campaigners.
“The only way you can determine what serious means is by going back to what was said during the Terrorism Act. It had to be designed to create a climate of extreme fear and undermine the foundations of government."
Sukaina Rajwani, the mother of one of the convicted campaigners, spoke of the implications of her daughter’s six-year sentence, which is many years longer than the punishment for criminal damage alone. Fatema is now considered a “high-risk prisoner”.
“This will cut her off from most of her family, her extended family, her friends, her community and her support network,” Ms Rajwani said.
The parents of the campaigners also raised concerns about the 15 years of monitoring by counter-terrorism police the group will be subjected to after serving their sentences. Emma Kamio, mother of Leona, held back tears when she said her daughter would be 50 when that monitoring was over.
Palestine Action was proscribed by the UK government last year after a series of direct action protests, culminating in a break-in at an airbase. The group’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, has appealed the decision at the Supreme Court.
Seven other Palestine Action demonstrators face terrorism sentences without a terror conviction for allegedly breaking into and spray-painting US President Donald Trump’s golf course in March 2025.
Kieran Robson, Uzma Bashir, Ricky Southall, Autumn Taylor Ward, Rebecca Sian Davies, John Moxley and Dylan Chiaramello were all charged with criminal damage after the phrase “Gaza Not 4Sale” was painted in large letters on the lawn.
But an indictment lodged with the High Court of the Judiciary in Glasgow over the incident states that their offence was aggravated by a “terrorist connection” under Section 31 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2009.
There has been huge support for Palestine Action since its proscription by. Last week, the tank Henry Jackson Society found that the group was still accepting online donations from British accounts using a workaround, despite being a banned organisation.
