Four activists could be sentenced as terrorists next month despite not being convicted of terrorism offences.
Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani are among several Palestine Action activists accused of raiding an Israeli weapons factory in Bristol in 2024.
They were found guilty of criminal damage earlier this month at Woolwich Crown Court, with Corner also convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent.
Two others, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, were found not guilty despite telling the court that they were proud of their actions.
During the trial, a jury was asked to decide whether the defendants were guilty of criminal charges but not allowed to know there was also a “terrorism connection”.
The 12-panel jury was also not permitted to hear why the defendants chose to target the Israeli arms firm, stripping the action of all context – namely the genocide in Gaza.
It is now up to the presiding judge to decide whether to sentence the activists with a “terrorism connection” – and, if he does, the ramifications will be enormous.
Unlike most prisoners in the UK who serve around 40 percent of their sentences, they would have to serve their full terms unless they can convince a parole board that they have “reformed” after serving at least two-thirds of it.
Once released, they could be treated as terrorists for decades.
And this could all happen without a jury ever finding them guilty of any terrorist offence, marking the first case where activists risk prosecution under terrorism provisions.
How did we get here? ‘Terrorism connection’ The Terrorism Act (2000) defined an action as “terrorism” if it:
a. Involves serious violence against a person
b. Involves serious damage to property
c. Endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action
d. Creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
e. Is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system
And it:
a. Is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
b. Is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause
When debating the act, home secretary Jack Straw reassured parliament that those definitions “will not catch the vast majority of so-called domestic activist groups which exist in the country today”.
That included groups like Greenpeace which were engaged in direct action campaigns on issues ranging from militarism to the environment.
Home Office minister Charles Clake added that the new proscription powers would only be used “when absolutely necessary”.
To this end, it was broadly understood that the act was not intended to allow for the designation of activism as terrorism on the basis of property damage that did not pose a threat to life or safety.
In 2021, the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act allowed prosecutors to attach a “terrorism connection” to a criminal case at a much lower bar than before.
It allowed non-terrorist offences which carried over two years of imprisonment to be sentenced with a “terrorism connection” without those charges being heard by a jury.
One of the few dissenting voices to this amendment was Lord Marks, who noted how sentencing individuals on the “basis of a decision taken by a judge alone, without hearing any evidence… would cut across the principle of our criminal law”.
He added: “No one should be convicted of an offence except upon admissible evidence, open to challenge in a trial and, if in the Crown Court, heard by a jury”. RELATED Palestine Action defendants dismiss lawyers to address jury directly Inside the factory, they clashed with security guards – one of whom allegedly hit an activist with a sledgehammer – and destroyed property including military drones.
Some of the activists were rounded up at the scene and detained under ordinary criminal provisions, but after 36 hours they were re-arrested under section 5 of the Terrorism Act.
Section 5 “establishes the offence of the preparation of an act of terrorism or assistance to another to commit an act of terrorism”. Anyone found guilty is liable to life imprisonment.
So extreme was this police response that a group of UN special rapporteurs sounded the alarm .
In a letter sent to the UK government, they observed how “UK police have exercised significant powers under counter-terrorism legislation despite the absence of credible connection between the activists’ conduct to terrorism as properly defined”.
The Filton activists were not ultimately charged under the Terrorism Act. But the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) later announced it would submit to the court that the first case being tried against the Filton activists had a “terrorism connection” under the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act.
This marked the first time that such provisions had been used against activists – and seemed to prepare the groundwork for the proscription of Palestine Action as a whole. Proscribing Palestine Action Documents seen by Declassified reveal how the UK government was considering the proscription of Palestine Action before the action in Filton.
A Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) report dated 27 June 2024, some five weeks before the incident, discusses a meeting with the CPS about “the resource implications for CTP” if Palestine Action were “declared as a terrorist group”.
The report contained a CTP threat matrix which identified four categories of “activism”. They ranged from “lawful activism” to “terrorism” as defined under the Terrorism Act.
In the view of the activists’ lawyers, this timeline suggested the “terrorist connection” was added to the Filton action to build a legal justification for proscribing the group as a whole.
“The material decision making agencies appreciated that in order for Palestine Action to be proscribed as a terrorist entity, rather than high level aggravated activism, there would need to be ‘terrorist’ organisation”, the lawyers argued during an abuse of process hearing last year.
They added that those agencies required concrete instances of “terrorism” in order to proscribe, with the first Filton hearing being “charged in a way that enabled Palestine Action to meet the definition of a terrorist organisation”.
Indeed, former home secretary Yvette Cooper used the “terrorism connection” issue when justifying her decision to proscribe Palestine Action in parliament last June.
Two months later, she also wrote in the Observer that charges against Palestine Action activists included a “terrorism connection” when seeking to explain her decision to proscribe.
That article was published despite internal advice that it risked prejudicing the criminal proceedings against the Filton activists, suggesting proscription was the key priority. RELATED Palestine Action ban risked activists’ right to fair trial, documents... Palestine Action has engaged in hundreds of direct action campaigns since it was founded in 2020. But at the time of proscription, the authorities only referred to three incidents which allegedly met the threshold for “terrorism”.
What made them different?
Last year, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) was asked under the Freedom of Information (FOI) act to provide “policy documents, guidance notes, circulars, or legal guidance issued to prosecutors” regarding when to apply a “terrorism connection” to criminal offences.
Internal guidance was also requested in relation to “the treatment of protest-related cases in which a terrorism connection may be considered”.
The AGO responded by refusing to confirm or deny whether the information was held. “Any documents that may or may not be held in relation to the application or proposed application of a ‘terrorism connection’ under the Sentencing Code to protest-related or criminal damage-related prosecutions would relate to the Attorney General’s function as a Law Officer and chief legal adviser to the Government”, it said.
When asked for the same information, the CPS said it “does not hold any internal CPS policy documents, guidance notes, circulars, or legal guidance within the specific scope of your request”.
Taken together, it would seem that the British authorities have drawn an invisible line whereupon protest-related criminal damage crosses a legal threshold into “terrorism” – but the public is not allowed to know where it is. £1 million Despite the absence of public information on how a “terrorism connection” is applied, internal documents and ministerial statements suggest that high-profile protest actions causing £1m in damage or more could leave activists liable to being sentenced as terrorists.
And this line appears to have been drawn with pro-Palestine activists in mind.
In March 2025, when the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), housed within MI5, recommended that Palestine Action be proscribed, its report focussed exclusively on three incidents which allegedly caused damage “in excess of £1m” as evidence of “terrorism”.
One of those three incidents was Filton, described in the JTAC report as “6 August 2024 Terrorist Attack” with “estimated damage… to be in excess of GBP 1 million”.
Another related to an action against French arms firm Thales in Glasgow in 2022 which was seemingly not assessed as terrorism until after Filton.
In 2023, a year after the Thales action, a private briefing for a British minister noted : “Palestine Action does not meet the threshold for proscription as they do not commit, participate in, prepare for, promote, encourage, or otherwise be concerned with acts of terrorism”.
In 2025, a Scottish counter-terrorism board observed that Palestine Action “has been focused on protest activity which has not been close to meeting the statutory definition of terrorism”.
What emerges from this timeline is that the authorities may have developed a new way of interpreting the threshold for “terrorism” – based on the “serious damage to property” limb of the Terrorism Act – and retroactively applied it to the Thales case.
That the authorities may have modified their interpretation of what constitutes “terrorism” raises serious concerns in and of itself, particularly given there has been no parliamentary or public consultation on the matter.
If any reinterpretation of the threshold for “terrorism” occurred after the Filton incident, this would raise concerns about ex post facto modifications of how the law is administered.
In other words, in light of the absence of any legal precedent, it would not have been possible for the defendants to know that the incident could be treated as terrorism at the time that it took place.
Moreover, it raises the prospect that private arms companies targeted by Palestine Action could be incentivised to inflate damage costs in order to aggravate punishment for activists, potentially offering a deterrent effect against future protest activity at their sites.
In the Thales case, which was later used to justify proscription, damage costs were estimated at around £190,000, with the company claiming “revenue lost due to the site closure” was £941,000.
In another instance, damage costs relating to a Palestine Action campaign at a factory in Runcorn, Chester, were revised down from £4m to £225,000-£345,000 – amounting to a reduction of over 90 percent.
Moreover, there appears to be no framework for ensuring the arms companies provide accurate damage reports before a “terrorism connection” is applied. RELATED Palestine Action barrister wins appeal in contempt case While conceding that Palestine Action was “highly unlikely” to advocate for violence, it claimed with regard to Filton that “some of the attackers attended the incident with the intent or willingness to conduct serious violence against persons in support of their political cause”.
Cooper repeated these claims in parliament when she said members of Palestine Action had demonstrated “a willingness to use violence”.
Security minister Dan Jarvis also said Palestine Action members “have used violence against people” and been “charged with a series of serious offences, including violent disorder, grievous bodily harm with intent and aggravated burglary”.
The same claims were emphasised by senior Conservative party officials, with shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel declaring Palestine Action had “a long history of violence”.
While used to strengthen the public justification for proscription, it remains unclear what if any bearing the issue of violence had on the decision to apply a “terrorism connection” to the first Filton defendants or to proscribe Palestine Action as a whole.
Furthermore, since the CPS applied for a “terrorism connection” to be added to the first Filton case, all of the defendants have been cleared by two juries of any violent intent.
While the Filton incident was used to publicly justify proscription, the verdict in that case, with the defendants cleared of violent intent, has undermined the public rationale for proscription.
And now, four Filton defendants could be sentenced as terrorists despite Palestine Action not being proscribed at the time of the incident and the High Court subsequently finding the ban unlawful, pending an appeal.
The sentencing hearing will take place on 12 June at Woolwich Crown Court. Three days later, the Court of Appeal will hand down its judgment on the legality of the Palestine Action ban.
The Crown Prosecution Service, Attorney General’s Office, and Counter Terrorism Policing were approached for comment.
The post Revealed: How Britain weaponised terrorism laws against activists appeared first on Declassified UK .