Four Palestine Action Activists Jailed After Elbit Raid — Action

Four Palestine Action activists were jailed on Friday after a 2024 break-in at an Elbit Systems UK site in Gloucestershire, where Mr Justice Johnson said their action had a terrorist connection. Charlotte Head, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani and Samuel Corner each received prison terms, plus an additional year on licence and 15 years of terrorist notification requirements.

Gloucestershire sentencing hearing

Head and Kamio were each jailed for five years. Rajwani received four years and 8 months for criminal damage, while Corner was sentenced to seven years and eight months. Corner was also convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent for striking Sgt Kate Evans with a sledgehammer.

Mr Justice Johnson described the case as a carefully planned and highly sophisticated attack and said, The fact that you were trying to shut down a company that you thought was acting unlawfully does not reduce the seriousness of the offence. He found all four defendants had a terrorist connection under section 69 of the Sentencing Act.

Elbit Systems UK damage report

The prosecution relied on a report saying the raid caused £1.2m of damage, including damage to 41 military assets. The report also referred to £395,056 of damage to six units in an unnamed drone system. The hearing centered on sentencing after criminal damage convictions, not terrorism convictions, but the judge still applied the terrorist connection finding to each defendant.

Rajiv Menon KC, for Head, called the prosecution approach an invitation to chilling, creeping authoritarianism that undermines the very fabric of our society. Mira Hammad KC, for Kamio, argued that the defendants had initially been arrested on suspicion of involvement in acts of terrorism but not charged with those offences.

Arguments over section 69

Tom Wainwright KC, for Corner, said a terrorist connection finding would also mean the suffragettes, the Greenham Common women and the Trident Ploughshares movement were terrorists. Wainwright also said, It’s wrong for someone to be sentenced for a more serious offence of which they have not been convicted, and added that drones may have been involved in taking the lives of men, women and children in Gaza.

The Friday hearing left each defendant facing the same extra 15 years of terrorist notification requirements after release, alongside the additional year on licence. For readers tracking the case, the practical change is immediate: the court has now fixed the punishment and the legal label attached to the offending, with the same section 69 finding applying to all four defendants.