Looking for more from MyLondon? Subscribe to our daily newsletters here for the latest and greatest updates from across London. The Home Secretary has decided to proscribe Palestine Action and will lay an order before Parliament next week to make membership and support for the protest group illegal. Yvette Cooper confirmed the move after Palestine Action vandalised two planes inside RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday.
The incident is being investigated by counter-terror police. The ban under terror laws will make it a criminal offence to belong to or support the group, and will be punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
A draft order will be laid in Parliament next Monday, and if approved after debates by MPs and peers, the ban could come into force by Friday. Ms Cooper said in a written ministerial statement: “The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton in the early hours of the morning on Friday 20 June is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action.
“The UK’s defence enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this Government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.” Palestine Action posted footage online showing two people inside the base at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday morning.
The clip shows one person riding an electric scooter up to an Airbus Voyager air-to-air refuelling tanker and appearing to spray paint into its jet engine. The group has staged a series of demonstrations in recent months, including spraying the London offices of Allianz Insurance with red paint over its alleged links to Israeli defence company Elbit, and vandalising US President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire.
Ms Cooper said the ban will allow law enforcement to “effectively disrupt the escalating actions of this serious group”, describing a further vandalism attack on a Jewish-owned business last month that Palestine Action claimed responsibility for as “clearly intimidatory and unacceptable”.
“Proscription represents a legitimate response to the threat posed by Palestine Action,” she said. “Its activities meet the threshold set out in the statutory tests established under the Terrorism Act 2000.”
The announcement comes as protesters clashed with police at a demonstration in support of Palestine Action in central London on Monday. The crowd surged towards police when officers tried to detain someone in Trafalgar Square in central London, while onlookers chanted “let them go”.
The protest had initially been planned to take place outside the Houses of Parliament, but the location was changed early on Monday morning after the Metropolitan Police imposed an exclusion zone. The Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said he was “shocked” by the planned protest and described Palestine Action as an “organised extremist criminal group”.
The Home Secretary added the proscription is specific to Palestine Action and does not affect lawful protest groups or others campaigning on issues around Palestine and the Middle East. “It is vitally important that those seeking to protest peacefully, including pro-Palestinian groups, those opposing the actions of the Israeli government, and those demanding changes in the UK’s foreign policy, can continue to do so,” she said.
The Home Secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation under the Terrorism Act of 2000 if she believes it is “concerned in terrorism”. Some 81 organisations have been proscribed under the 2000 Act, including Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas and al Qaida, far-right groups such as National Action, and Russian private military company the Wagner Group.
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