Case File #007 — Palestine Action & the Filton 6

The judge decided it was terrorism fourteen months before the verdict. The jury was never told.

In March 2025 a judge ruled these defendants had a "terrorist connection." That ruling was kept from the jury, the press and the public until after they were convicted in May 2026. Meanwhile the CCTV evidence sat in the safe of the company they were accused of damaging. This is not a foreign country. This is Woolwich Crown Court.

Case File #007 · Every claim links to its source

I. What is not in dispute

6 AUG 2024 Palestine Action activists drive a decommissioned prison van through the fence of Elbit Systems UK at Filton, near Bristol, and damage the site with sledgehammers and crowbars. In the confrontation, PC Kate Evans suffers a fractured spine. Damage is later put at around £1.2 million.^[1]
AUG 2024 Those arrested are detained under Terrorism Act powers, allowing extended detention without charge — but the charges actually brought are ordinary criminal ones: aggravated burglary, criminal damage, violent disorder. Twenty-four people are eventually charged.^[1]
MAR 2025 At a preparatory hearing, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson rules that a "terrorist connection" exists under section 69 of the Sentencing Act 2020. This ruling is kept secret from the jury, the press and the public for over a year.^[1]
5 JUL 2025 Palestine Action is proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000 — the first direct-action protest group in Britain to be banned as a terrorist organisation. Over 2,200 arrests follow under terrorism legislation, and 254 people are charged, many for sitting in public holding placards.^[2]
NOV 2025 – FEB 2026 First trial of the "Filton 6" at Woolwich Crown Court. Defendants have by now been on remand well beyond the ordinary six-month custody limit. Judge Johnson rules the "lawful excuse" defence inadmissible — they may not argue they acted to prevent harm in Gaza.^[1]^[3]
DURING TRIAL The CCTV map given to the defence is incomplete, omitting areas where disputed incidents occurred. Elbit had sole control of the CCTV system for two days after the raid. Police evidence bags containing USB sticks of security footage are found inside an Elbit safe — evidence bagged by police, handed to a party in the case, and kept for over a year. In an email to Elbit security, PC Sarah Grant warns there is "a huge opportunity for the defence to use the jumps and gaps in the footage to their advantage."^[4]^[5]
DURING TRIAL Prosecution witnesses — Elbit security guards and police officers — repeatedly change their accounts when confronted with video that contradicts them. Body-worn footage showing an Elbit guard carrying a whip, and later a sledgehammer, is disclosed to the defence only mid-trial.^[5]^[6]
4 FEB 2026 After more than 36 hours of deliberation, the jury acquits all six of aggravated burglary. On 18 February the remaining defendants are also acquitted of that charge when the prosecution cannot support it.^[1]^[7]
APR–MAY 2026 Retrial. The defence is barred from referring to Gaza, to what Elbit manufactures, to the previous acquittals, or to the jury's conscience. Reporting restrictions prevent the press from telling the public about the restrictions themselves. On 14 April, MP Zarah Sultana uses parliamentary privilege to reveal that the defendants will be sentenced as terrorists and "the jury will not be told."^[1]^[8]
5 MAY 2026 Verdicts: Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani convicted of criminal damage; Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin acquitted. Corner is convicted of GBH without intent by an 11–1 majority, and acquitted of GBH with intent.^[1]
12 MAY 2026 Reporting restrictions lift. Only now do the public and the convicted learn what the judge decided fourteen months earlier: they will be sentenced as terrorists.^[1]
FEB 2026 In a separate case, the High Court rules the proscription of Palestine Action unlawful, finding that only three of the group's hundreds of actions met the statutory definition of terrorism.^[9]^[10]
12 JUN 2026 Sentencing under section 69: Head 6 years, Kamio 6 years, Rajwani 5 years 8 months, Corner 8 years 8 months. The terrorism designation means serving two-thirds before parole rather than the usual 40%, plus registration as terror offenders. Outside the court, 107 people are arrested.^[11]^[12]
15 JUN 2026 Three days later, the Court of Appeal overturns the High Court and upholds the proscription — holding that the lower court had substituted its own proportionality judgment for the Home Secretary's in a national security matter.^[13]
2026 Defence barrister Rajiv Menon KC faces contempt proceedings, in part for citing Bushel's Case (1670), the judgment that established that juries cannot be punished for their verdicts. The Bar Council Chair calls it a "troubling episode." A complaint to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, signed by over 3,000 people including lawyers and retired magistrates, alleges the judge showed "a loss of objectivity."^[1]^[14]

II. The red flags

01The verdict's meaning was decided before the trial, and hidden from the people deciding it

March 2025: the judge finds a terrorist connection. May 2026: the jury convicts, not knowing that a guilty verdict on criminal damage would produce a terrorism sentence.^[1] Whatever the statute permits, consider what it means in practice. Twelve citizens were asked to decide a case whose consequence had been fixed above their heads and withheld from them. An MP had to use parliamentary privilege to say out loud what a British court would not let the press print.^[8]

02The evidence was kept in the safe of the company that was allegedly the victim

Police evidence bags holding USB sticks of the CCTV were found inside Elbit's own safe, having been handed over and kept for more than a year.^[5] Elbit had sole control of the system for two days immediately after the raid.^[4] Chain of custody exists precisely so that no interested party ever holds the evidence unsupervised. Here the interested party held it, twice, and it was not treated as fatal to the case.

03The gaps were where the disputes were

The CCTV map disclosed to the defence omitted areas — including where contested incidents occurred — and Elbit said multiple cameras in the alcove where confrontations happened were not working.^[4] Cameras fail; that is ordinary. What is not ordinary is a police officer writing to the company that there is "a huge opportunity for the defence to use the jumps and gaps in the footage to their advantage"^[4] — a sentence that reads as concern about how missing evidence will look, not about the fact that it is missing.

04The accounts moved, and always in the same direction

Police and Elbit security witnesses altered their evidence when confronted with footage that contradicted it — and the corrections consistently ran one way, having made the defendants appear more aggressive than the video showed.^[5]^[6] One officer's claim to have seen a defendant with a sledgehammer turned out to be a member of security holding it.^[1] We are not asserting witnesses were coached — nobody has proved that, and we won't claim it. We are asking why sworn testimony from professional witnesses erred repeatedly in one direction, and why footage undermining the prosecution surfaced only mid-trial.

05They were forbidden from explaining why they did it

Lawful excuse ruled inadmissible. No mention of Gaza, of what Elbit builds, of the earlier acquittals.^[1]^[3] A prosecution may legitimately argue motive is irrelevant to whether a window was broken. But the same motive that was inadmissible as a defence became the entire basis of the terrorism finding at sentencing — the judge relied on their political and ideological purpose.^[11] Motive could not be heard when it might help them, and was decisive when it could be used against them.

06The defence barrister was pursued for citing a case from 1670

Rajiv Menon KC faced contempt proceedings connected to invoking Bushel's Case — the foundation of jury independence in English law.^[1] The Chair of the Bar Council called it a "troubling episode."^[14] When reminding a jury of a 355-year-old constitutional principle becomes a professional hazard, the chilling effect isn't a theory about the future. It already happened, to a named barrister, in London.

07The judges could not agree it was terrorism — but a placard was enough to be arrested

In February 2026 the High Court held the proscription unlawful, finding only three of hundreds of Palestine Action activities met the statutory definition.^[9] In June the Court of Appeal reversed it on deference grounds.^[13] While senior judges disagreed with each other about whether the group was a terrorist organisation at all, over 2,200 people were arrested under terrorism law, many for sitting quietly with a sign.^[2] If the Divisional Court couldn't be sure, what exactly was the pensioner on the pavement supposed to have known?

III. The honest counterargument

What the prosecution case says — and the first part of it is serious

Start with the part no supporter should skate past: PC Kate Evans has a fractured spine. A jury heard the evidence and convicted Samuel Corner of grievous bodily harm. That is not symbolic protest or property damage — it is a person seriously injured at work, and a conviction returned by twelve citizens who saw far more of the evidence than any of us. The damage ran to roughly £1.2 million, and driving a van through a fence to attack a site with sledgehammers is not civil disobedience in the tradition of sitting down in a road.

On the law: section 69 of the Sentencing Act 2020 has a statutory test, and on its face it fits — serious property damage, committed for a political or ideological cause, intended to influence a government. Parliament wrote that provision; the judge applied it. The secrecy has a mundane rationale too: whether a terrorist connection exists is a sentencing question for the judge, not the jury, and telling jurors about sentencing consequences is generally barred precisely so it can't sway their verdict. And the jury's own conduct suggests the system was not simply a rubber stamp — they acquitted all six of aggravated burglary, acquitted two defendants entirely, and split 11–1 on the most serious charge against Corner. On the proscription, the Court of Appeal is the higher court, and its reasoning — that national security judgments belong to ministers accountable to Parliament, not to judges substituting their own view — is orthodox administrative law, not a stitch-up.

Take all of that seriously. Then notice what it does not touch. It does not explain how police evidence bags ended up in the safe of the company whose site was attacked. It does not explain why the CCTV was blank where the disputes were, or why exculpatory body-worn footage appeared only mid-trial. It does not explain why motive was inadmissible when it might exonerate and decisive when it could aggravate. And it does not answer the question the sentence itself raises: if this is terrorism, the word now covers a category of British protest it has never covered before — which is precisely what Amnesty and Liberty warned.^[12]

IV. The question

We are not telling you the Filton defendants did nothing. Some of them broke things, and one of them was convicted of seriously injuring a police officer. That is what the criminal law is for, and it worked — there were charges, a jury, and convictions.

We are telling you that a judge classified them as terrorists fourteen months before the jury reached a verdict and that the jury was kept from knowing; that an MP had to shelter behind parliamentary privilege to say so; that the CCTV sat in the safe of the interested party; that the accounts of professional witnesses kept needing correction in one direction; that the defence could not say why; and that a barrister was pursued for reminding a court what a jury is.

A country confident in its case does not need to hide the sentence from the jury. It does that when it suspects that twelve ordinary people, told the whole truth, might not go along with it. That is not a legal system worried about terrorism. It's a legal system worried about you.