Showing support for Palestine Action will become a criminal offence in the UK [Getty]
Pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action’s co-founder on Friday lost a bid to pause the British government’s decision to ban the organisation as a “terrorist group” pending their legal challenge.
Membership of, or showing support for Palestine Action will become a criminal offence in the UK as of Saturday.
Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, asked London’s High Court to stop the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, before a full hearing of her case that banning the group is unlawful, later this month.
British lawmakers this week decided to ban Palestine Action after its activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged two planes in protest against Britain’s support for Israel.
Proscription would make it a crime to be a member of Palestine Action that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Proscribed groups under British law include Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Palestine Action however, will become the first direct action group banned as a “terrorist” organisation under UK law.
The group has increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in Britain with direct action, and accuses the British government of complicity in the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which has so far killed at least 56,800 people according to the Gaza health ministry, and injured over 133,000 others.
Ammori’s lawyer Raza Husain said the proscription was “an ill-considered, discriminatory, authoritarian abuse of statutory power”.
Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that “violence and criminal damage” have no place in legitimate protest and her lawyers say the case should be brought at the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission instead.
(Reuters and The New Arab Staff)
