Five more Palestine activists could be sentenced as terrorists

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wants to sentence five more Palestine activists as terrorists for committing criminal damage, it can be revealed.

Brendon O’Hagan, Amanda Kelly, Hmeera Atiqnisar, Mohammed Malik, and Alma Yaniv were convicted of criminal damage last month for a protest at a Barclays bank branch in Burnley in 2024.

It was carried out in the name of Palestine Action almost a year before the group was banned under terrorism laws.

In the agreed facts of the case, the prosecution’s lawyers acknowledged that Barclays provided investments and loans to Elbit Systems , Israel’s largest arms firm.

The court heard that the activists smashed windows and sprayed red paint over the building, with damage costs allegedly amounting to £212,805.

Court filings show that it was only after the trial concluded that the CPS decided to apply for a terrorism connection to be added to the case.

The move came after the judge overseeing the case requested submissions on whether the case should be designated as having a terrorism connection.

This means that neither the jury nor the defendants were aware that the case could carry a terrorism connection until after the guilty verdicts were delivered.

If the judge agrees to attach a terrorism connection to the case, the activists will have to serve much longer prison sentences.

They would be treated as terrorists upon release for decades, with requirements to register new electronic devices, email addresses, bank accounts, and romantic relationships with the police.

The move suggests that a ruling last month against another four Palestine Action activists, who were sentenced as terrorists by Justice Jeremy Johnson, is already having far-reaching consequences for protest-related trials in Britain.

Johnson treated the four protesters as terrorists even though they were only convicted of criminal damage at an Elbit Systems factory in the Filton area of Bristol.

Atiqnisar, one of the defendants in the Barclays case, told Declassified : “You go through a two-week trial only to be told after it’s over that you were on trial for terrorism.

“Johnson’s judgment has opened up the floodgates for potentially hundreds of activists to be sentenced as terrorists for taking direct action against genocide.

“It’s a few broken windows and red paint that they’re now saying is terrorism. It shows you the lengths the state is willing to go to in order to protect the Israeli weapons trade.

“I’m definitely scared. I can’t say I’m not scared. It’s frightening but what’s far more frightening is living in a world where genocide is normalised and people abstain from resisting it”.

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However, they argued that the circumstances of the case changed during cross-examination and opened the door for the defendants to be charged under terrorism provisions.

Four of the five defendants gave evidence that “they were members of, or affiliated, with Palestine Action at the time of the offending” and “had attended Palestine Action training”.

“The present offending formed part of a wider Palestine Action campaign directed against Barclays comprising in excess of twenty similar attacks”, the prosecution lawyers wrote.

These matters “emerged for the first time during the defence case and went significantly beyond the defendants’ respective defence statements”.

The defendants’ statements in court, the lawyers argued, allow for the criminal damage convictions to carry a terrorism connection under the Sentencing Act.

They said the offending “involved serious damage to property; was designed to influence the government or intimidate the public or a section of the public; and was undertaken for the purpose of advancing a political or ideological cause”.

Palestine Action carried out dozens of direct actions against Barclays branches in 2024 in an attempt to force the bank to divest from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms firm.

In the agreed facts of the case, it was acknowledged that “Barclays PLC provided investments, loans and other corporate financial services to Elbit Systems, a weapons and military technology company”.

Equipment manufactured by Elbit Systems, the agreed facts continued, “has been used by the Israeli military during operations in Gaza, including during the conflict in 2023-2024”.

It was also conceded by the prosecution that Elbit has been “involved in the construction and maintenance of sections of Israel’s West Bank barrier” including “cameras and remotely operated weapons systems”.

In October 2024, three months after the Palestine Action campaign, it was reported that Barclays had sold all of its 16,345 shares in Elbit. Those shares were worth over $3.4m.

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Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani damaged 40 military assets belonging to Elbit, including quadcopters, allegedly causing over £1m in damage.

During the sentencing hearing, Justice Jeremy Johnson ruled that this constituted “serious damage to property” as defined within the Terrorism Act (2000) .

He also said the action was “designed to influence the UK government and to intimidate a section of the public, and was for the purpose of advancing a political cause”.

This was despite defence counsel submitting that the Terrorism Act was never intended to allow for the designation of activism as terrorism on the basis of property damage alone.

Johnson’s ruling marked the first time that protesters had been sentenced as terrorists and appears to have opened the door for further terrorism convictions in protest-related cases.

Notably, his failure to clarify where the threshold lies for “ serious damage to property” appears to have allowed for lower-level direct action campaigns to be caught in terrorism provisions.

Watch how Labour turned property damage into ‘terrorism’

Lowering the threshold

The move to prosecute the Barclays activists as terrorists comes despite that incident taking place almost a year prior to the proscription of Palestine Action.

When the government was building its case for proscription, the MI5-based Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) listed three incidents of alleged “terrorism” carried out by the group.

The incident at Barclays had already taken place when the JTAC report was drafted. But it was not classified among those three incidents, all of which allegedly involved over £1m in damage.

In fact, the Barclays action appears to be the first protest case involving less than £1m in damage costs to be pursued by the CPS under terrorism provisions.

This suggests that scores of protest-related criminal damage trials could now be pursued as terrorism without the knowledge of juries – and, in this case, the defendants.

Moreover, it raises concerns about how the law could be applied arbitrarily to protest cases, with some being designated as terrorism and others not for no discernible reason.

The defendants have applied for a pre-sentencing hearing for legal arguments to be heard regarding the attachment of a terrorism connection to the case.

They are due to be sentenced on 4 September 2026.

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