Palestine Action ban caused ‘crisis in confidence’, Supreme Court told
Lawyers for Huda Ammori, a co-founder of Palestine Action, told five Supreme Court justices that proscribing the group last year had produced a “crisis in confidence” in anti-terrorism law and provoked unprecedented civil disobedience. Home Office figures seen by the BBC show more than 4,000 arrests at protests where supporters held signs, with 1,200 charges authorised; those trials are in limbo. Twenty-seven people were arrested outside the court on Wednesday.
Raza Husain KC said the group was banned on the basis of only three of 385 incidents that the Home Secretary assessed as offences under the Terrorism Act, “less than one per cent of its actions over five years”, and that the suffragettes, anti-war and environmental movements had used similar or more extreme tactics without being treated as terrorists. Henry Blaxland KC said that, far from depriving the group of publicity, all proscription had done was “pour fuel on to a fire”. Ms Ammori’s team accepted that the group was not an ordinary peaceful protest movement, and the court heard that one member had been jailed for fracturing a police officer’s back with a sledgehammer, violence the group says it never advocated. For the Home Secretary, Sir James Eadie KC argued that the Court of Appeal’s ruling was lawful and proportionate, citing four convictions and a “terrorist connection” finding over the raid on Elbit Systems at Filton, plus American sanctions, and said the ban “does not prevent public expressions of support for the Palestinian cause”. This is the first time the court has weighed a terrorism ban against free speech.