Four Palestine Action activists have been convicted of “possession of articles to cause criminal damage” in Wolverhampton Crown Court, while no verdict could be reached for a fifth defendant. Over a seven-week trial, and 5 days of deliberation, the defendants fought charges brought against them, after being arrested in a vehicle en-route to an Elbit site, with items such as buckets of paint [1].
The activists were stopped in Walsall by West Midlands Police while travelling towards UAV Engines, an Elbit weapons factory in Shenstone, who manufacture drone engines and has exported such weapons components to Israel [2, 3]. UAV Engines, is owned by Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems, who manufacture 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet, which is often used to harass, surveil and murder Palestinian people. Elbit’s weaponry is often marketed as “battle-tested” or “combat-proven”, after it has been developed on the captive population of Gaza [4].
After their arrest, two were remanded to prison, during which time their homes raided by police. Over two years later, the trial against them saw equally heavy responses from the state, for an arrest made pre-emptively. The Judge Michael Chambers ruled out any ‘justification’ defences, meaning that defendants were censored and unable to defend their actions on the basis of preventing the greater crime Elbit and the colonial violence that their weapons facilitate or on necessity to save lives. While each defendant faced an average of 5 hours of cross-examination, many of the questions revolved around finding more information on the wider Palestine Action network.
The four convicted will be sentenced in Wolverhampton Crown Court on the 26th June.
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
If you would like any further information on Palestine action, please contact info@palestineaction.org
Palestine Action is a direct-action network of groups and individuals formed with the mandate of taking action against the sites of Elbit Systems and other companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, calling for all such sites to be shut down.
[1] https://www.palestineaction.org/activists-remanded/
[2] https://caat.org.uk/data/exports-uk/licence-list?index=date®ion=Israel&company=Elbit+Systems
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/09/armstrade-gaza