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Five Palestine Action activists who vandalised a Barclays branch in Burnley will not be sentenced as terrorists, a judge has ruled.
Dubbed the Barclays five, Brendon O’Hagan, 28; Amanda Kelly, 31; Hmeera Atiqnisar, 31; Mohammed Malik, 28; and Alma Yaniv, 70, were all found guilty in June of causing damage exceeding £200,000, after breaking windows and throwing red paint at a branch of Barclays Bank in Lancashire in August 2024.
The group targeted the site in protest at Barclays because it held shares in the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems.
Judge Altham, the recorder of Preston, ruled on Friday that while the damage was substantial, it was not of the size of other attacks or against a sensitive property, such as an arms company, as has happened in previous Palestine Action incidents, and thus did not meet the high threshold for a terrorist sentencing.
All five will still be sentenced next month for criminal damage, but will face shorter jail terms as a result of the ruling.
After the five activists were found guilty in June, the trial judge, Philip Parry, told the prosecution and the defence he intended to consider a “terrorist connection” to the offending. It is understood this was a result of new information coming to light during the trial.
Neither the five activists nor the jury that found them guilty of criminal charges were aware that the case would be considered as terrorism until after they were found guilty.
During the hearings that took place at Preston crown court on Friday, legal representatives for the activists stated that four of them, excluding Yaniv, had admitted to being members of Palestine Action during the trial, but that this was irrelevant, because Palestine Action was not proscribed as a terrorist group until a year after the act of vandalism.
In a statement put out by the five after the ruling, the group said they were “extremely relieved that the court has seen sense” but said a terrorism sentencing “should never have been an option” and accused the state of “attempting to equate property damage to the Israeli war machine with terrorism”.
They said: “A terrorism sentence would not only aggravate our sentence significantly, it would mean we would be imprisoned as terrorists and subject to notification requirements for 15-plus years upon release. Those requirements include notifying police of any new address, bank account, phone number, email address, relationship and more. If we failed to do so, even by accident, we would face an additional five years in prison.
“The proscription of Palestine Action, the arrests of over 3,500 people under the Terrorism Act for holding signs and the sentencing of direct action activists as terrorists, are all tools being used by the state to protect the Israeli weapons industry and continue its role in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“The use of counter-terror powers against direct action for Palestine came after extensive lobbying by the Israeli government, Elbit Systems, pro-Israel lobby groups and politicians with vested interests.”
It was reported in October 2024 that Barclays had sold all its Elbit shares. The bank had previously said it held them only in relation to client-driven transactions, being neither an investor nor shareholder in the arms company.
Commenting on the ruling, Kerry Moscogiuri, the chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said: “The fact that the defendants in today’s case were not sentenced as terrorists is welcome. No one should be treated more harshly under the law because their crimes were part of a protest against genocide or any other issue, and the misuse of terrorism powers in this way should never have even been considered.
“We now need to see the proscription against Palestine Action lifted and an end to the misuse of sweeping counter-terror powers against direct action protesters. The government should begin the process of reversing the years of attacks on our right to protest, one of the most effective tools we have to hold our leaders to account.”
