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Following Palestine Action’s Christmas Day action, against Elbit’s UAV Engines Shenstone drone factory, an activist has been remanded in custody.
The activist, Bryn, was arrested on Christmas Day, at the Staffordshire plant, where Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons maker, manufacture engines for the killer drones used in the Gaza Genocide. The UEL rotary engines are used in Elbit’s 450 Drone, as well as the Israeli Military Industries (IMI) Harop Kamikase Drone, which is being upgraded to kill autonomously.
Whilst UAV Engines routinely obfuscate their involvement in supplying arms to Israel, in line with their non-disclosure agreement with the Israeli military, export licenses show the company send drone parts to Israel with the ‘end-user’ listed as the ‘State of Israel’.
The Christmas Day action saw two specially-modified vehicles arrive at the Shenstone site, equipped with cherry-pickers, from which activists smashed the factory structure, while the drivers of the vehicles locked-on, secured inside. While Bryn was remanded in custody, the four others, who took part in the action, were released the following day, 26th December.
A dedicated activist, Bryn recorded the following statement on his arrest form:
“The spotlight should always be on Palestine, and the Palestinian struggle for equal human rights under international law, and against Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation and genocide.
“The failure of our government to stop arms exports to Israel compel many ordinary people, like me, who are human rights supporters, to take action against those exports, and against the killing they enable.
Bryn was arrested for another action on July 31st 2024, when Palestine Action blocked both entrances of the same UAV Engines factory, and plastered it with blood-red paint. While on bail for the action, he had not been charged, until now, which was a way of getting him remanded in prison.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
“As he joins Palestine Action’s other 21 political prisoners, who will be starting 2025 in a jail cell, Bryn tells us that he is unbowed and unbroken, and accepts the position he is in. Like all, but 2, of the other prisoners, he is being held, unconvicted of any offence, imprisoned as part of the British state’s attempt to deter Palestine Action. However, their actions against arms manufacturers will only serve to inspire others to take direct action to disrupt Israel’s war machine.”
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
If you would like any further information on Palestine action, please contact media@palestineaction.org
Palestine Action is a direct-action network of groups and individuals formed with the mandate of taking direct action against Elbit Systems’ UK locations at grassroots level, calling for them all to be shut down and for the British government to end its complicity in Israeli apartheid.