Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.
After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.
It must have been work to conceal this from the jury.
No wonder they’re trying to do away with these pesky jury trials.
It really will help to make examples of people with minimal effort.
Bonus points for setting it up just in time for what is very possibly going to be a fascistic government.
United Klandom
If you have to hide significant evidence from the jury, that’s a pretty good indication you’re doing something wrong.
Wow, Israel really does have a hunch of powerful UK politicians and judges by the balls, doesn’t it?
What balls?
Half of the UK parliament is chosen by the monarch. The other half is chosen through the problematic and undemocratic first past the post voting system. UK streets have CCTV everywhere. UK libel laws are extreme. The state-owned media defends pedophiles and transphobes, while the private media focuses on gossip and lies rather than reporting on the news (on top of also defending transphobes and pedophiles, of course).
It’s time for people to admit to themselves that the UK, especially England, is a dictatorship.
Some of the other errors in your post have been pointed out already, but i wanted to mention one additional one - there is no state media in the UK
as for camping it a dictatorship, you’ve got good comic timing on that one
BBC
Yes, i figured that’s what you meant. I assume that your knowledge of the BBC is as well-informed as your knowledge of the House of Lords.
The BBC is not state media
“The Chairman and the non-executive members for the nations are appointed by HM The King on the recommendation of Ministers while the other members of the Board are appointed by the BBC through the Board’s Nominations and Governance committee.”
“The BBC is primarily funded by a compulsory annual TV license fee paid by UK households.”
That’s a state media, regardless of what it may view itself as.
Edit: Also, I wasn’t wrong about the House of Lord being dictatorial. The things I was wrong about was the complexity of the dictatorship. Instead of it all being chosen by the monarch, some of it is chosen through bribes, some by theocrats and some by politicians. None of the seats are directly chosen by the people, like in a democracy, and that was the whole damn point!
Half of the UK parliament is chosen by the monarch.
No.
The other half is chosen through the problematic and undemocratic first past the post voting system.
Yes.
UK streets have CCTV everywhere.
It’s not the CCTV you want to worry about. The CCTV is overwritten regularly and typically goes nowhere. It’s the internet-connected stuff you wanted to worry about, and the blanket surveillance by Google and meta. Carrying a smartphone and worrying about CCTV while you post pictures of yourself where LLMs can scrape them is utterly irrational.
It’s time for people to admit to themselves that the UK, especially England, is a dictatorship.
No, just a half-police state. But at least you tend not to get murdered by the police for being black in charge of a vehicle in the UK, and the healthcare is free.
This, though, this is AWFUL and they went OUT OF THEIR WAY to deny these people justice. If you deny the defendants the right to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you have denied them justice.
It’s not the CCTV you want to worry about. The CCTV is overwritten regularly and typically goes nowhere.
yes, it is the CCTV. Because there is no way to verify by yourself that the recordings don’t get transmitted or processed for their contents all the time.
Carrying a smartphone and worrying about CCTV while you post pictures of yourself where LLMs can scrape them is utterly irrational.
that’s a huge assumption. that kind of people don’t usually complain about CCTVs.
So you’re just going to pretend that the house of lords don’t exist?
The House of Lords appointment process is bizarre. Parties sell the seats to political donors, the church still seats lords and the monarch has influence but not control over the process. They also just reformed out the last hereditary peers. Its not entirely democratic but not that monarchist either. Its probably best described as an oligarchist institution imo.
That’s somehow even worse and more corrupt than I thought it was.
I think thats a somewhat fair take, but its definitely not a system dominated by the monarch. The ruling political and economic classes are in the drivers seat.
I’m not going to pretend that the monarch chooses them. The prime minister chooses them and has done for a looooooong time.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Signs of a healthy legal system and society.
And the muppets over there claim they live in a country with Rule Of Law…
This is the UK
UK isn’t much better off rn.
That’s not normal…
People need to read about Aggravation
It’s difficult to believe that this is legal and won’t be thrown out by a higher court on appeal.
Depends how far the rot goes.
This has to have been a politically motivated act. Influence occurring behind the scenes. What if that extends to appeals or the high court?
UK supreme court hasn’t exactly covered themselves in glory so far.
B I R T H S T R I K E
UK citizens need to stand up to the UK government with a simple message: do what we fucking say or we will march straight off a demographic cliff. No reproduction without representation. No reproduction while the government supports the bombing of children elsewhere.
So many people can’t even change their shopping habits to make more ethical choices. There’s no way a sizeable population is going to forego passing on their DNA just to send a message.
As a teen, I figured I’d adopt kids when I got older. The amount of people who were dead-set on “b-b-but my genetic lineage!” was startling. As I’ve aged through my 20s and now my 30s, I’ve seen them stick true to their word and have their own babies, even with the world circling down the drain. The biological call to reproduce seems to override a lot of other matters.
Now consider how hard it is to get people to quit something without a biological imperative, like shopping on Amazon…
Anyway, I admire your initiative. I just can’t imagine people participating en masse in a protest that involves forfeiting something so dear and intimate to them as their choice to reproduce.
Too long a time lag to achieve anything.
You’re just a right wing psy op to repress the birth of future left leaning voters! /s (I got inspired by recent comments I’ve seen)
But it’s an interesting idea that could royally screw with a country if followed through. But I think it has abysmal chances of actually happening. Choosing to not have kids when a couple is both willing and able is an incredibly large sacrifice to those that want kids. And you wouldn’t see if such a strike worked until 9 months later (or a not earlier since there wouldn’t be as many pregnancy scans).
This is reminding me a lot of the Prairieland case in the US, and that really doesn’t bode well for the defense.
Never convict. Ever.h
Death to england
I mean they already doing this to themselves. Nothing but Ls since Brexit. If it wasn’t for London’s grip on elite marketplaces the country would be collapsing already.
Nothing but Ls since Thatcher.
Yeah this is actually insane. DO NOT LET THIS GO.
Ok, I won’t.
