The Pro-Palestine Activists Imprisoned for Months Without Being Found Guilty of Any Crime

Before her arrest, Ellie Kamio had experienced a panic attack just once in her life. “Now I have them almost every day,” she told Novara Media from behind bars.

Kamio, a 29-year-old forest school nursery teacher, is one of 18 Palestine Action activists known as the “Filton 18” arrested by counter terrorism police after disrupting an Israeli arms manufacturer in Filton, Bristol, last August.

On multiple occasions, Ellie fainted from heat stroke due to the temperature in her prison cell. Her cell windows don’t open properly, and it’s prison policy that the heating is on full blast and non-stop during the winter.

Kamio had already spent five months in prison at HMP Bronzefield before she was moved, without warning (or reason), to HMP Eastwood Park the week before Christmas. She describes the move as “like starting from zero again. I was isolated and cut off. You feel so trapped here.” For over five weeks, Ellie was unable to receive visitors while the new prison processed her.

Ellie’s mother, Emma, said: “At several points, she hit a wall. We all did.”

As things stand, Kamio’s trial is set for November 2025 – 15 months after her initial arrest along with nine fellow activists affiliated to protest group Palestine Action. Until then she will languish in prison, serving the equivalent of a two and a half year sentence without being found guilty of any crime. When the group finally stands before a jury, there is a strong chance they will not be convicted. Over the last four years, Palestine Action’s activists have often been acquitted by juries on the grounds of “necessity to save Palestinians lives”.

On 6 August, Palestine Action published a video which it said showed “a glimpse of how actionists used a repurposed prison van to break inside” the facility. The video shows a van crashing through a fence as activists shout “go, go go!” This was the first time Palestine Action targeted Elbit’s £35m research and development site in Filton, and the action cost the company over £1m in damages.

Elbit, the maker of the Iron Sting precision-guided bomb, provides up to 85% of the land-based equipment procured by the Israeli military and about 85% of its drones, according to Database of Israeli Military and Security Export. It has over a dozen sites across the UK. Palestine Action claims that its disruptive protests are behind the closure of three of them.

On 6 August, and in the days after, police swooped on Kamio and nine others. In late November, the police made a further eight arrests via another spree of home raids across the UK, some at gunpoint. The group, most of whom are in their twenties or thirties, are currently being held at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, HMP Bronzefield and HMP Eastwood Park on charges of criminal damage, violent disorder and aggravated burglary, albeit with a “terrorism link” that the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) says it will argue at the point of sentencing.

Ellie’s mother Emma was also arrested in the days after the Filton action, on suspicion of affray and aggravated burglary. Emma, a small business-owner living in Wales, said riot police raided her home without a warrant, despite having already arrested her daughter. “I was half naked [when they came in],” she said “They seized my work laptop, and my 16-year-old’s school laptop, handcuffed me and then led me away.”

Emma was kept by the police in solitary confinement for five days. “I disappeared from my family almost a week before they released me without charge and without apology, my life and my business upside down. I was left traumatised, in prison scrubs, 150 miles from my home, feeling like an animal. [My crime] was raising a young woman with a great moral compass.”

A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: “A complaint against police has been made which remains under investigation.”

Another parent of one the Filton18 anonymously told Novara Media how three vans, filled with 20 armed counter-terrorism police, bashed down her door at 7am, handcuffing her and her children, one of whom was just a teenager.

Punished without trial.

Emma’s daughter is one of over 40 political prisoners identified by campaign group Defend Our Juries who have been jailed in the UK since July. The case of the Filton 18 has become emblematic of the UK’s increasingly repressive relationship with political activism. Advocates for the activists say the group is effectively being punished through the UK government’s abuse of counter-terrorism measures in a desperate bid to deter Palestine Action from targeting Elbit.

The controversy has reached parliament. In a Westminster Hall debate in December, John McDonnell MP made a rare, impassioned intervention on the Filton 18’s behalf, saying: “A number of them most probably will be proved innocent, but they’ll have served nearly two years in prison – for what? For trying to do what we’re failing to do – preventing this government supplying arms to a regime that’s killing children.”

In November, United Nations observers wrote to the head of the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, about the case. The activists appear to have been arrested under counter-terrorism legislation “for conduct that appears to be in the nature of ordinary criminal offences and does not appear to be genuinely ‘terrorist’ according to international standards”, the observers said. In late January, the government responded saying it would not be appropriate to comment while criminal proceedings are ongoing.

The measures taken against the Filton 18 are an escalation from the British state, especially with regards to Palestine Action. For four years, actions by those associated with the group were prosecuted using non-terrorism related charges, meaning they were released on bail before their trial. “[But now that] they’re being tagged and held in remand in connection to terrorism, suddenly the courts are very cautious of giving bail,” said Simon Pook, a lawyer at Robert Lizar, the firm defending the Filton 18. Pook spoke with Novara Media in general terms, not specifically about the Filton 18.

“When people are arrested under terrorist legislation, they are held in a remand space that is separate from the standard criminal cell. It’s very sterile and intentionally isolating, detaining you in confinement for up to seven days in what I view to be an immensely tortured position,” said Pook.

“Before and after interrogation, the law requires that your emotional well-being must be scrutinised by a doctor every day. It says a lot if a medical professional has to see you every day about the conditions in which you’re being detained,” he said.

In prison, the Filton 18 have experienced the host of extraordinary powers available to the police, CPS and prison authorities under the UK Terrorism Act. “Unlike ordinary offenses, the police have stronger pre-charge powers when investigating acts of terrorism (or crimes linked to them), such as [suspects being] held and questioned for longer than usual, pre-charge, without the right to consult a solicitor,” said Pook.

For Kamio, this adds to the grinding daily reality of life in prison. “[Because I’m] labelled as a higher security risk, it means even more restrictions in prison”, she said. “HMP Eastwood Park is not providing conditions that support my mental or physical wellbeing”. The ministry of justice has been approached for comment.

Fatema Zainab is another of the Filton 18. According to Naila Ahmed, head of campaigns at Cage International, Zainab has faced institutional Islamophobia while behind bars. “She’s been denied access to religious books, denied the use of pins in order to secure her headscarf, and had male guards storm her room unannounced causing her to rush to cover her hair whilst the officers mock her for doing so,” said Ahmed. “It’s an extremely repressive environment and Fatema is feeling the sharp edge of it as a visible Muslim woman.”

The prison authorities have singled Zainab out for numerous drug and pregnancy tests, unlike the other Palestine Action activists at HMP Bronzefield, Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, said. “These invasive procedures are aimed to humiliate her. She’s a devout Muslim. None of these numerous drug or pregnancy tests have come up positive,” she said.

An HMP Bronzefield spokesperson said: “Whilst we cannot comment specifically on any individual, we strongly refute any such claims and are confident that all relevant legislation is being followed.

“Should any prisoner have a specific concern, there are numerous ways in which these can be raised.”

Speaking to Novara Media from prison, Zainab said: “Our judicial systems and our democracy face pressing issues, as political prisoners and those taking proportionate measures against catastrophic harm and mass loss of life, are being harassed, persecuted, and imprisoned.

“This comes after seeing the horrific news and images coming out of Gaza and the occupied West Bank and learning just how far deep our complicity runs within it.”

Over the last four months behind bars, the activists have been subjected to decreased communication with the outside world, decreased access to prison facilities and activities and non-association orders with other Palestine Action and imprisoned members of environmentalist group Just Stop Oil (JSO), so as to isolate political activists from each other, said Ammori.

For the first six weeks of the year, Kamio frequently found herself locked in her cell for 23 hours a day. Like all the others in the Filton 18, she has been given a non-association order with imprisoned members of JSO, but severe staff shortages at the prison have meant that locking her up is often the only way to enforce this.

Lex Korte, a spokesperson for Free Political Prisoners, believes that remand is being used as a tactic by the state to disrupt activism. An activist “cannot mobilise from prison”, she said. The CPS is “trying to nip it in the bud in that way and stifle the growth of movements and they’re trying this with Palestine Action but it’s just not working.”

A ministry of justice spokesperson said: “No one is remanded for political reasons. Decisions to remand defendants in custody are made by judges, independently of government, on the basis of public protection, the seriousness of offence and previous offending behaviour.

“We strongly refute the suggestion that these remanded prisoners are experiencing different treatment to other prisoners.”

A chilling moment.

For Pook, there’s a concerning continuity between the overzealous anti-protest laws brought in by the previous Tory administration and the current Labour one. “Our civil liberties are in grave danger under the current process that is labelling activist groups as terrorist suspects, as first rolled out by the Conservatives and now Labour,” he said.

While the Filton 18 languish in prison being treated like terrorists, they will not be charged for terrorism, per se. The CPS intends instead to argue a “link with terrorism”. This loose “link with terrorism” charge is a new development in the UK’s legal landscape, but one that echoes the mistreatment of the Irish community in the 70s, 80s and 90s. “It’s a very chilling moment,” said Pook.

“I remember when the UK government called the Irish a ‘suspect community’. They were labelled as terrorists through similar processes we’re seeing today, detained at airports and ferry ports under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The UK government is moving us to the point where activists are suspects, criminalising the rights of protest. This causes me grave concern.”

Pook also points to the lobbying power of the arms and fossil fuel industries – and the geopolitical interests attached to those mammoth sectors. “If the government wants those industries to develop, they’ve got to curtail opposition to it.”

Freedom of Information disclosures show that in recent years, Elbit held multiple meetings and conversations with UK ministers and the attorney general’s office (AGO), which oversees the CPS. (The AGO told Novara Media: “We do not provide a running commentary on who the AGO holds meetings with or how many.”)

“The Israeli [government] and Elbit Systems have been pressuring the British establishment, including the CPS and police, to take action to stop the successful work of Palestine Action,” said Ahmed.

“CPS prosecutors are obliged to remain free from political interference. We’re supposed to have an independent judiciary. That’s not happening,” said Ammori.

Ammori said that a crescendo is approaching. Elbit “is scared” and the government’s abuse of the Filton 18 is a “desperate attempt” to quash the group, once and for all. “By targeting Elbit’s high-security site at Filton, we hit their prize possession. They know that it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be forced to leave the UK, if we continue our actions.”

Although the Filton 18 are facing the most intense use of police powers against Palestine Action to date, Ammori says that it has only galvanised the movement.

“People are still stepping up constantly,” she said. “We understand the repercussions, but it’s almost liberating to see the state use such unprecedented powers against us, showing us, once again, that it is more willing to protect the interests of an Israeli arms manufacturer over its own citizens; more willing to protect foreign war criminals over activists trying to uphold the UK’s supposed-commitment to international law.”

When asked for comment by Novara Media, a spokesperson Counter Terrorism Policing South East, which carried out most of the arrests against the Filton 18, said: “Individuals who are detained in police custody are cared for in compliance with the relevant legislation and code of practice for arrest and detention. It would not be appropriate for us to discuss the details of specific individuals, however.”

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said: “We are an independent organisation and have not met with Elbit Systems in relation to these prosecutions.

“Our decision to submit to the court that these alleged offences have a terrorist connection is based on our independent assessment of the evidence available and the relevant legislation, and not on any other factors.”

Additional reporting by Simon Childs.