Celebrities Urge Judge to Halt ‘Cruel’ Terror Sentences for Palestine Action Activists

Celebrities including Sally Rooney, Greta Thunberg and Steve Coogan have joined more than 100 public figures in signing an open letter against unjust terror sentences for Palestine Action activists. 

Protesters Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Zainab Rajwani broke into an arms factory owned by Israel’s Elbit Systems in Filton, near Bristol, in 2024 and damaged equipment.  

A previous trial ended with the jury finding six defendants not guilty of aggravated burglary, and with partial or no verdicts on charges of criminal damage and violent disorder. 

The Crown Prosecution Service sought a retrial on those charges, with four of the activists found guilty of criminal damage on 5 May. 

The four were told they risked extended prison sentences under terror provisions despite not being charged with such offences.

In an open letter signatories urged Judge Jeremy Johnson to drop the “unjust and cruel” use of a ‘terrorism connection’ in Friday’s sentencing.  

“To bypass the jury and sentence a group of protesters as terrorists would constitute an extremely grave miscarriage of justice, with consequences far beyond this case alone,” the letter said. 

“Never before has a link to terrorism been imposed at the sentencing stage in a criminal damage case. The implications for civil liberties in Britain are difficult to overstate.”

Other signatories include filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos, Terry Gilliam and Ken Loach, and actors Zoë Wanamaker, Brian Cox, Miriam Margolyes and Zawe Ashton.

Support also comes from musicians Charlotte Church and Kate Nash, Labour MP John McDonnell and economist Yanis Varoufakis. 

“The only stated basis for this connection is that the defendants were ‘attempting to influence the Israeli government by restricting their access to weapons’,” the letter says. 

“This is an obvious effort to undermine solidarity with Palestine, but what it really undermines is UK law.”

A consensus of legal experts agree that Israeli’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide, as does the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry. 

International law prohibits arms exports to any nation committing genocide or other atrocity crimes, so the activists “may well have saved lives” by entering the Elbit facility and dismantling weapons, the letter says.