Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.
After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.
Absurd argument dismissing basically all context as “irrelevant” such as they have the right to stop genocidal weapon shipments.
The fact that that is an option for the judge is insane. That a judge can just be like, “I literally don’t give a shit about this topic. In fact it’s illegal for you to mention it, regardless of the relevance.”
Yep and this happens in a lot of different court cases like you see it often in average criminal trials where the judge throws out information and bans it due to “irrelevance” when it obviously is very relevant.
What is the check and balance mechanism for this? Judges can’t act arbitrarily - they need to adhere to a standard I imagine
Appeals
You’re assuming Britain has genuine Rule Of Law rather than the Law being a tool to enforce the will of a few, a tall assumption.