Ban on Palestine Action takes effect after legal challenge fails
Home Office spokesperson said: 'We welcome the Court’s decision and Palestine Action are now a proscribed group'
A ban against Palestine Action has come into force designating it as a terror group, after a late-night legal bid to delay proscription failed.
This now means that membership of or support for Palestine Action is a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison in the most extreme circumstances.
The Home Office has welcomed the ban on Palestine Action after the group lost a late-night Court of Appeal challenge on Friday evening, which sought to stop it being banned, less than two hours before the move came into force at midnight.
A Home Office spokesperson said on Saturday: “We welcome the Court’s decision and Palestine Action are now a proscribed group.
“The Government will always take the strongest possible action to protect our national security and our priority remains maintaining the safety and security of our citizens.”
The move to ban the organisation was announced after two Voyager aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on June 20, an incident claimed by Palestine Action, which police said caused around £7 million of damage.
MPs and peers backed the move, with Baroness Berger telling the Lords how an attack by Palestine Action activists on a Jewish owned business in north-west London “reverberated throughout the entire community.”
A group has said it is set to gather in Parliament Square on Saturday holding signs supporting Palestine Action, according to campaign group Defend Our Juries.
In a letter to the Home Secretary, protesters said: “We do not wish to go to prison or to be branded with a terrorism conviction. But we refuse to be cowed into silence by your order.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action on June 23, stating that the vandalism of the two planes was “disgraceful” and that the group had a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage”.
MPs in the Commons voted 385 to 26, majority 359, in favour of proscribing the group on Wednesday, before the House of Lords backed the move without a vote on Thursday.
Four people – Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, Jony Cink, 24, Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 36, and Lewis Chiaramello, 22 – have all been charged in connection with the incident at Brize Norton.
They appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday after being charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom, and conspiracy to commit criminal damage, under the Criminal Law Act 1977.
Jewish News first revealed how the Home Office was looking at banning Palestine Action last November.
The move has mainly been opposed by far-left MPs, by the Greens, and by some Liberal Democrat politicians.
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