On 6 February, the 15 anti-deportation activists known as the ‘Stansted 15’ were sentenced for nonviolently stopping a deportation flight carrying 60 people to West Africa in March 2017. They had already launched an appeal against their convictions on 7 January, but this has yet to be heard. Their sentencing sparked a counter-trial and direct action in London.
Melanie Strickland (35), Ali Tamlit (30) and Eddie Thacker (29) were given nine-month prison sentences, suspended for 18…
Trials & legal cases
1 April 2019News
1 December 2017Feature
Dan Woodhouse and Sam Walton (centre) with supporters outside Burnley magistrates court after the verdict on 26 October. Photo: Andrea Needham
On 26 October, Burnley magistrates court acquitted Ploughshares activists Sam Walton and Dan Woodhouse of criminal damage after they admitted breaking into a BAE Systems plant to use household hammers on military jets.
Poor old British Aerospace. Not only were the first group of people to break in to their Warton site in…
29 October 2017Blog
Poor old British Aerospace. Not only were the first group of people to break in to their Warton site in Lancashire to disarm a warplane acquitted, now the second lot have also been found not guilty. It's curious how difficult it appears to be to convict people for acting peacefully to prevent war crimes.
The first such disarmament action took place in January 1996, when a group of women (myself included) broke in and disarmed a Hawk warplane being sold to Indonesia for use in their…
1 June 2017News
Lots of high-profile direct action cases have court dates coming up.
DSEI appeal
On 13 June, the high court in London will review the acquittal of eight anti-arms fair activists – Isa Al-Aali (Bahrain), Bram Vranken (Belgium), Luis Tinoco Torrejon (Peru), and Lisa Butler, Angela Ditchfield, Thomas Franklin, Susannah Mengesha (UK) – by Stratford magistrates court in April 2016.
The high court’s decision is likely to affect peace activists’ ability to use the legal defence…
1 June 2016News
On 15 April, eight people from Bahrain, Belgium, Chile, Peru and the UK were acquitted at Stratford magistrates’ court of obstructing the highway during the defence & security equipment international (DSEI) arms fair held in East London last September.
The defendants were: Isa Al-Aali from Bahrain; Bram Vranken from Belgium; Javier Garate Neidhart from Chile; Luis Tinoco Torrejon from Peru; and Angela Ditchfield, Lisa Butler, Thomas Franklin and Susannah Mengesha from the UK.…
1 February 2016News
I was charged with assaulting police officer in the execution of his duty on 12 September in the run-up to the DSEI arms fair in East London.
The officer had grabbed me without warning when I was climbing a pillar to reinforce a banner which I had stuck up there a little earlier, and I had swung my arm out to try and make him let of me. The gaffer tape in my hand had hit his face.
There were two lines of defence: firstly, that the police officer was not acting in the…
3 April 2014News
Judge Crabtree warned us that while judgements in magistrates’ courts usually take between 45 minutes and two hours, this one was likely to take considerably longer. He was right; his judgement took three-and-a-half hours. But it was a judgement worth waiting for.
Six activists were being prosecuted for ‘aggravated trespass’ for occupying trees along the route of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road in January 2013 (see PN 2554, 2566).
The first two hours or so of the hearing in…
18 March 2014News in Brief
There have been anti-arms trade legal victories connected to protests at the defence & security equipment international (DSEI) arms fair last September. On 4 February, five Christian protesters (Chloe Skinner, Christopher Wood, Daniel Woodhouse, James Clayton and Symon Hill) were acquitted of aggravated trespass. On 18 February, charges were dropped against six other activists. During Balcombe-related anti-fracking trials at Brighton magistrates’ court at the end of January, Aaron Bell was…
18 February 2014Feature
Grannies Are In Action (GAIA) set up a ‘car wash’ in the
floodwaters of Combe Haven, East Sussex, on 12 January.
Photo: Marta Lefler
Over half the charges against Combe Haven Defenders (CHD) anti-roads protesters have been dropped or abandoned, or have resulted in not guilty verdicts, in the four trials so far concluded. At the time of going to press two trials were still underway, continuing into early February.
CHD, an East Sussex anti…
18 February 2014News
On 10 and 13 January, Reading magistrates court dismissed charges of ‘obstruction of the highway’ against two groups of Trident Ploughshares (TP) activists because of procedural errors by the crown prosecution service (CPS).
On 10 January, Leonna O’Neill, Jamie Watson and Julia Mercer were on trial for their participation in the international Action AWE blockades outside the atomic weapons establishment (AWE) Burghfield on 2 September last year (see PN 2562). Julia Mercer had…
24 January 2014Blog
On Wednesday, January 15th, 79-year old Margaretta D’Arcy, writer, member of Aosdana which honours outstanding contributors to the arts in Ireland, and widow of the late playwright John Arden, answered a knock on the door of her small Galway City terraced house. It was the Irish police. She was arrested and ferried by squad car to Limerick Prison to serve a three month sentence. Her crime: failure to sign a bond pledging to no longer trespass onto unauthorised areas of Shannon Airport.…
1 November 2013Feature
On 7 October, six peace activists were found guilty of criminal damage during a protest at a British drones base, RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. They were given a conditional discharge for six months, were fined £10 and ordered to pay £75 in court costs.
Defendant Keith Hebden told PN: ‘The judge recognised the validity of our arguments, saying Waddington was a “legitimate target for protest”. The token order to pay £10 in compensation reads to me like an invitation to press…
5 February 2013News
The protestors that day suffered ‘kettling’ (mass detention), charges by police horses and baton attacks. Alfie required emergency brain surgery after being struck by a police baton.
Like many others, Zak and Alfie were arrested and charged with serious public order offences. Some cases have resulted in prison sentences, including one of 12 months for a student for merely waving a placard stick. However, where students pleaded not guilty and described police brutality on the day,…
16 October 2012News
Two census resisters had their trials continued in early October, with Andy Manifold due to return to court on 19 October and Sarah Ledsom hoping to finish her trial on 23 November. Both are at Dale St magistrates' court in Liverpool.
400 people in Britain have been or are being prosecuted for failing to fill out the 2011 census.
Among them are a number of peace activists who objected to the involvement in the census of military firms Lockheed Martin (processing the data for…
25 September 2012News in Brief
On 23 August, two Smash EDO activists were found guilty by Brighton magistrates court of aggravated trespass at the EDO MBM arms factory in Moulsecoomb.
Jessica Nero and Gavin Pidwell used superglue to lock themselves to the gates of the factory on 26 April, causing 100 lost hours of work, according to EDO managing director Paul Hills.
After several days of legal argument and evidence-giving about EDO’s breach of the Cluster Munitions Act (2010), magistrates fined the…