On the face of it the English High Court ruling that the Palestine Action proscription is unlawful makes the decision that the proscription remains in place pending appeal utterly illogical. But what if the High Court ruling is deliberately designed to fail at appeal?

I believe that it is. They chose an extremely narrow path to rule that proscription was unlawful and produced an extremely weak judgment. This gives an impression of fairness in the judicial system – except that nothing has changed, the ban remains in force. And it remains in force because the judgment is designed for the government to win at appeal.

The judgment for the most part is precisely what you would expect from three hand-picked, known right-wing, judges. They:

• State that Palestine Action is a terrorist group within the meaning of the 2000 Terrorism Act (para 134);
• State that they do not accept the United Nations assertion that the UK definition of Terrorism is incompatible with international norms (para 141);
• State that in any case international law has no impact on English statute law (para 142);
• State that all those arrested for showing support for Palestine Action – specifically including for holding placards – were rightly arrested as they were deliberately committing a criminal act (para 118);
• State that there was no need for Yvette Cooper to consult before the proscription (para 60);
• Repeat the Crown’s assertions of the Filton case as fact with no reference at all to the findings of the jury (paras 34, 139);
• State that comparisons with Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are not valid as those organisations have not carried out serious property damage (para 144);
• State that the motive of Palestine Action in trying to stop Genocide is not “material” (para 70);
• Argue that the interests of national security and protection of the rights and freedoms of others justify the interference with freedom of speech and assembly (para 128).

The judges have therefore supported the government on almost all of its key propositions. You may well ask, how did they find all that and still find the proscription unlawful?

Well, they chose a deliberately narrow and precarious path through. They first found that the proscription was unlawful in that it contradicted the Home Office’s published policy on how the discretion of the Secretary of State would be applied in deciding whether to proscribe a terrorist organisation.

It is important to understand this. The ruling is that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation, but that the Secretary of State is not obliged to proscribe all terrorist organisations but may use her discretion.

I have read the judgment again and again and it is incredibly obscure as to in what way the Home Secretary did not follow her policy. It seems to be that she did not consider the factors peculiar to Palestine Action, but merely proscribed as though that automatically followed a determination that an organisation is terrorist. Rather than consider the question in the round, she merely looked at the “operational advantages” of proscription.

I assume the underlying assumption is that this means she failed to take into account the disadvantages of proscription, but it does not say that. I don’t think I am being obtuse. You try.

92. This conclusion may appear to rest on a very narrow basis – the Home Secretary had, after all, formed the belief that Palestine Action is an organisation concerned in terrorism and in these proceedings the claimant does not challenge that decision. However, this conclusion is a direct and necessary consequence of the policy the Home Secretary has applied to the exercise of her discretion to proscribe such organisations. The purpose of the policy is that not all organisations that meet the concerned in terrorism requirement should be proscribed.

93. Any decision-maker who adopts a policy for a particular purpose is at liberty to disapply or modify that policy in a particular case, but any such disapplication or modification must be express and must be for a sufficient reason. In this case, the Home Secretary’s approach was to apply the policy (a policy of long-standing, dating back to the time the 2000 Act was enacted), without modification.

94. The operational consequences and advantages of proscription is not a factor consistent with the policy for the obvious reason that such consequences and advantages will apply equally to any organisation that could be proscribed – i.e. any and every organisation that meets the requirement to be an organisation concerned in terrorism. In principle the position could be otherwise if in a particular case, by reason of an organisation’s structure, membership, activities or otherwise, the measures in the 2000 Act that are the consequences of proscription would be unusually effective. In such a case, it could be consistent with the policy to regard the operational consequences of proscription as an “other factor”. But that is not the present case. There is no such evidence so far as concerns Palestine Action. Nor in the present case could it be contended that the reliance placed on the consequences of proscription was immaterial to the exercise of the discretion or the application of the policy. Both in the note of the meeting of the Proscription Review Group and in the 26 March 2025 ministerial submission, the operational advantages are relied on as providing a clear case to use the discretion to proscribe. Each suggests that it is an important matter going to the exercise of the discretion, if not the central consideration in that exercise in that case.

95. The consequence and conclusion of this point is that, notwithstanding the latitude that the policy provides, the Home Secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was not consistent with her policy. The closed material does not affect our conclusion on this ground.

There are two problems with this aspect of the judgment.

Firstly it seems so obscure that it is designed to fail at appeal.

The notion that its proscription was unlawful because the Secretary of State had failed to follow, not the established law, but the precise procedures in some buried Home Office policy document that nobody had ever read, is not one that I would have expected to carry the day compared to all the other issues.

It is indeed an established legal point, but one used in objections to planning applications rather than cases of alleged terrorism. Which is what I believe the Court of Appeal will say.

Secondly it leaves it open to the Secretary of State just to change the published policy, then proscribe again.

The second ground on which the court found against the government is that the proscription is incompatible with Articles X and XI of the European Convention on Human Rights – Freedom of Speech and Assembly.

But again this is not what you think.

Remember the judges found that the 2700 people arrested for opposing the ban have been quite rightly arrested, as expressing support for Palestine Action is a criminal act. The court does not hold that their right to freedom of speech is infringed.

In fact the court rehearses all the ways that speech will be chilled and people will be de-platformed as a result of the proscription, but does not find they are unreasonable to combat “terrorism”.

128. The Home Secretary’s pleaded case is that the purpose of proscription was to “disrupt and degrade PA so as to protect the rights of others and maintain national security”. The submissions on behalf of the Home Secretary sought to define the objective as “controlling terrorism” or “controlling terrorist organisations” through proscription of organisations that engage in “terrorism” as defined in s.1 of the 2000 Act. It seems to us that the latter is a description of the means of obtaining the objective. The identified legitimate aims of the proscription decision are “the protection of the rights and freedoms of others” and “the interests of national security”. Those aims appear in each of articles 10(2) and 11(2), respectively and are objectives that, in principle, are capable of warranting an interference with each Convention right.

129. Although the claimant raised the question whether there is a rational connection between the means chosen and the aim in view, no basis for suggesting there is not a rational connection was put forward. Proscription is rationally connected to the objective of disrupting Palestine Action so as to protect the rights of others and the interests of national security. That is so whether the objective was limited to curtailing actions by Palestine Action causing serious property damage within the meaning of section 1 of the 2000 Act, or extended more broadly

When after all this support for the government, the judgment finally delivers the key paragraph on why the proscription was unlawful, it suddenly leaps out at you: the result of a proportionality exercise the judgment had not previously defined or given a methodology.

140. Considering in the round the evidence available to the Home Secretary when the decision to proscribe was made, the nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities, so far as they comprise acts of terrorism, has not yet reached the level, scale and persistence that would justify the application of the criminal law measures that are the consequence of proscription, and the very significant interference with Convention rights consequent on those measures.

It is a goal entirely against the run of play in the previous 139 paragraphs. I am afraid to say that I think the marked lack of intellectual underpinning again makes it a structure designed to fail.

Three known very conservative judges were appointed at the last moment to replace the liberal judge Chamberlain, who was unceremoniously booted off the case. It seemed astonishing that these known sympathisers with the security state had found the proscription unlawful.

But they cannot really think both that it is unlawful, and that it should continue pending appeal. That is utterly illogical.

They cannot really think it is an unlawfully disproportionate interference with freedom of speech, and that those arrested for holding placards opposing it were criminals and rightfully charged.

That is a logical impossibility also. Yet both sit side by side in this judgment.

The judges are not stupid. It can only be that they do not really mean it when they state one of those opinions. All the signs are that it is para 140, swinging entirely unsupported and exposed and waiting to be struck down, that they do not really mean.

If they believed in their own judgment, the judges would have quashed the proscription pending appeal.

Palestine Action was a proscribed organisation before this judgment and it is a proscribed organisation after this judgment. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

That is why it is essential that the Scottish judicial review goes ahead. I for one am very interested to discover whether the paragraph

142. We doubt that the consensus claimed exists: see and compare R v Gul (Mohammed) [2013] UKSC 64, [2014] AC 1260 per Lords Neuberger and Judge at paragraphs 44 – 51. In any event, this submission faces the further obstacle that, when taking her decision, the Home Secretary was entitled to rely on the definition of terrorism in the 2000 Act. Indeed, she was required to apply that definition. Had she purported to rely on any other definition for the purposes of her decision she would have acted unlawfully. A “consensus” in international law is not a trump card in English law; any such consensus cannot permit either disregard of or derogation from an English statute save to the extent permitted by statute.

which specifically references “English law”, applies equally in Scotland. The English legal tradition is that the “Crown in parliament” is sovereign and may do absolutely anything it wishes, irrespective of international law, individual rights or any other consideration. The Scottish legal tradition is that the people are sovereign and protected from arbitrary or oppressive executive action.

Should Huda Ammori again win at appeal, Shabana Mahmood will certainly appeal to the Supreme Court. It would be extremely difficult for the Supreme Court to rule against the highest courts of both England and Scotland. So there is reason to continue the Scottish action even if the English case continues to win.

Should the UK government win at appeal in England, the Scottish case becomes still more crucial.

The UK government has succeeded in postponing the Scottish case, in order to give time to prepare for the admission of secret evidence. This is an incredible authoritarian procedure where they can submit “intelligence” to the court, which neither I nor my legal team will ever be permitted to know about, let alone have a chance to reply.

My interest will be “represented” by a “special advocate” with whom I shall never be able to communicate and thus will have no ability to give them the answer to whatever lies the UK government has put forward – probably about non-existent Iranian funding or entirely invented bomb plots.

This system is simply fascist. We have no idea to what extent the “secret evidence” used in the English case contributed to the court’s agreement that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.

We push on. I hate to say this, but we are now desperately short of funds to continue this action. I cannot keep asking the same supporters to give more, but if you know people who can afford it and will contribute, please activate them.

You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.

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Alternatively by bank transfer:

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As the trial finished at Woolwich Crown Court of the six Palestine Action activists who entered the Filton factory to destroy Israeli killer drones, Starmer, Cooper, Lammy and Mahmood are left bereft of a single guilty verdict in the case on which they relied heavily to label Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

I could not, on pain of imprisonment, tell you this during the trial. One item produced by the prosecution as evidence was the notebook of Charlotte Head, on which she had written details from her training session with Palestine Action and of the proposed direct action against Elbit’s drone factory.

The first ten pages of her notes were about the Israeli weapons company Elbit, their footprint in the UK, their corporate structure and the weapons they manufacture, and the evidence of the use of their weaponry in the genocide in Gaza.

The jury were shown the notebook but were specifically not allowed to see the first ten pages. Throughout the trial anything that referred to the crimes of Elbit, their role in the mass killing and mutilation of women and children, and their cosy relationship with the British government, was excluded from the jury. The judge continually stopped the defence lawyers from asking or saying anything about who Elbit are or why their property was being attacked.

The defendants were not permitted therefore to explain to the jury why they did what they did – which you might have believed was a pretty fundamental right. The jury were additionally, in effect, instructed by Judge Johnson to convict on the least serious charge, that of criminal damage.

But despite the state taking every possible precaution to ensure that the state got its convictions in this show trial, the jury refused to find that trying to stop Genocide is a crime.

This trial was fundamental to the government’s argument that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation. And the key to that was the accusation that Palestine Action from the start intended harm to people, not just to property. That is why these defendants were all charged with “aggravated burglary”.

Aggravated burglary is an extremely serious charge, carrying a potential life sentence. It is the offence of breaking into a property with the intent to use a weapon. On aggravated burglary, all six defendants were found resoundingly Not Guilty.

So the attempt to portray Palestine Action as an organisation involved in violence against persons has fallen flat on its face. Because the jury could see it was stupid and obviously untrue.

When it comes to events after the activists were attacked by security guards, three of the six were found not guilty of the charge of “violent disorder”. On three others the jury could not reach a verdict.

Most interesting of all perhaps was the charge of criminal damage to Elbit’s machinery and instruments of genocide. Here Judge Johnson to all intents and purposes had instructed the jury to convict. Yet enough of the jury could not accept that stopping Genocide is a crime.

The final question was the charge against Samuel Corner of Grievous Bodily Harm with Intent. This was the famous incident where the security guards attacked the defendants with weapons and there was a melee as they defended themselves.

It is worth stating that the tabloid stories and right-wing meme of “a policewoman’s spine was fractured” was always utter nonsense. As the defence closing speech stated:

The prosecution have said it was a fracture to the spine, a deliberate choice of words which although technically accurate, conjure up a break, a snapping of the spinal vertebrae. Maybe that’s what the jury had in mind until they saw the CT scan – it was actually an injury that wasn’t obvious. The doctors looking at the first X-rays didn’t identify any bone damage, nor in an MRI later.

The injury didn’t require surgery and Sergeant Evans was advised to take painkillers and do physiotherapy. The agreed facts state from medical evidence that you’d expect such a fracture to heal in six to twelve weeks, with full healing in three to six months, and no long-term consequences.

The unfortunate policewoman suffered no damage at all to her spinal cord. She had a possible hairline fracture to the wing of one vertebra. That there was any fracture at all was never definitive from the X-rays and MRIs. Whether it reached the bar of grievous bodily harm was disputed; how it was caused was disputed; and whether there was any intent to harm was disputed. The refusal of the jury to convict was completely consistent with the evidence heard in court.

This has driven right-wingers into a frenzy with completely false claims about the extent of the injury, and continued reference to a highly edited brief video clip.

That video clip is extremely important because it represents the height of the state’s attempt to use this incident to demonise Palestine Action. The police were permitted, during the course of the trial, to release a single and highly edited clip of video said to represent the injury of Sergeant Evans by a sledgehammer. A great deal of other video evidence was not released. This resulted in a massive media frenzy.

Even before this, Yvette Cooper and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Mark Rowley had caused massive prejudice by stating that a policewoman had been attacked with a sledgehammer.

None of these deliberate attempts to affect the trial was censured by the judge nor resulted in any proceedings for contempt of court. Yet we were strictly told we absolutely could not mention that the judge was withholding the evidence about Elbit from the jury, as that would prejudice the trial and we would face contempt of court proceedings.

On Sergeant Evans, she has become a cause célèbre for the right, but I should say there is no evidence she is herself whipping this up. Her behaviour on the night was admirable. She was not herself involved in the excessive use of force – and, despite her own painful back, tended to others after the event quietened.

In my view, this prosecution was doomed by the overcharging and exaggeration used by the government to demonise Palestine Action. The “aggravated burglary” charge was ludicrous. To attempt to claim that the activists entered the factory with the intent of using weapons against people, went so far against the evidence it was bound to fail.

The massive over-exaggeration of the extent of Sergeant Evans’s injury has successfully whipped up right-wing hysteria, but did not really meet the threshold of grievous bodily harm, and the decision to add intent to that charge was again not backed by evidence.

On criminal damage, the jury plainly refused to accept the destruction of weapons of genocide was a crime. For that, I salute them. For the rest, they simply applied robust common sense to the evidence before them.

The “policewoman attacked with a sledgehammer” nonsense of course featured heavily in the English judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action. In the Scottish judicial review, they cannot really use this – not without a caveat that a jury did not agree with them.

The Filton result is great news for the Scottish judicial review. We have to submit all the paperwork for that, in just seven working days. I hate to say this, but we are now desperately short of funds to continue this action. I cannot keep asking the same supporters to give more, but if you know people who can afford it and will contribute please activate them.

You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/

Alternatively by bank transfer:

Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address NatWest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB

Or crypto:

Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a

I have now been here a week and I think that I have absorbed enough to attempt a little analysis, as opposed to the simple impressions I gave shortly after arrival.

Those impressions remain valid however: this is not a repressive state. I was on the Randy Credico show live on WBAI New York on Friday, and by chance my friend, the renowned FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley was also on, from Minnesota (where I have stayed with Colleen and her husband in their home).

I was explaining that, in a week of going all round Caracas, I had yet to see a checkpoint, that nobody had at any stage asked me who I am, what I was doing or prevented me from going anywhere, and that the shops, bars and restaurants are all functioning normally.

Colleen reported from Minneapolis that there were checkpoints everywhere, that the streets are full of heavily armed men, that people are frequently stopped, questioned, asked to produce documents, and diverted, and that many shops bars and restaurants are closed because the staff are afraid to venture out into the streets. Colleen is heavily involved in detainee support and in getting supplies to people sheltering in their homes.

Remind me again, which of us is in a supposed dictatorship?

I want to tell you a couple of things to help explain Venezuela. I visited the mausoleum of Simon Bolivar, a genuinely heroic man. He has now been removed from the main Venezuelan Pantheon into a connected dedicated modern mausoleum. The Pantheon itself contains the remains of many of the heroes of the Venezuelan War of Independence, and monuments to all of them.

The Venezuelan War of Independence was, of course, in many respects similar to the United States war given the same name. It was a war between colonial elites and their metropolitan masters. Unlike the founders of the USA, Bolivar himself was genuinely opposed to slavery, but that was not true of many of his key allies.

So the Pantheon as originally conceived in the late 19th century was inhabited by the remains and memories almost entirely of those heroic people of Spanish descent who fought against the colonial control of Spain. This is the great founding ideal of Venezuela.

When Chavez and Maduro came to power, they made a very important change. They added a monument to the liberated slaves who had fought against the Spanish. Then Chavez and Maduro each added an extra monument: to leaders of the Native Americans who had fought against Spanish invasion in the first place.

This caused outrage among right wingers furious that the purity of the Pantheon, the great focus of Venezuelan nationalism, was being desecrated for what they viewed as political purposes. Which brings me to what I think is a fundamental observation. Politics in Venezuela are basically racial.

I am treading on eggshells here, but in 2019 I published this post noticing the contrast between opposition and government group photos. The leadership of the right wing are basically whiter. That is simply who they are.

Of course the divide is not absolute, and individual exceptions exist. But it is there. Politics in Venezuela are strongly class based, and in this post-colonial society it is difficult to disentangle race from class.

What the opposition want is simply to turn back the clock and restore economic apartheid in Venezuela. I had a very interesting talk with Ricardo Vaz of Venezuela Analysis. He explained how Chavez’s revolutionary policies had brought people into political discourse who had always been ignored in what was historically an extremely unequal society:

“The rulers, now the opposition, suddenly found that their cook, their cleaner, their driver and even their gardener were learning to read and write and starting to get political ideas. They did not like this at all”.

They still don’t like that. It is not possible for me here now to capture what happened exactly in the 2024 elections. Plainly the opposition performed relatively well, though I do not in the least believe they got 68% of the result. Maduro’s closing rally had 1 million people while the opposition’s had 50,000.

For the government to remain in power against the will of 68% of the population would require a degree of state repression which simply does not exist here. There is very little surveillance compared to Western states, let alone to acknowledged dictatorships. There are no politicised police or militias in the streets. There are no restrictions on people moving around and mingling.

Machado has discredited herself, as effectively as she has discredited the Nobel peace prize. Giving the prize to Trump made her look foolish and suppliant, and praising the bombing of her own country which killed fellow citizens has really not gone down well at all, even with opposition supporters.

But even that has not harmed her nearly as much as her remark to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee that 60% of Venezuelans are involved in narcotics or prostitution. This is not quite what she said, but it is near enough and it really annoyed people here:

We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels that have taken over 60% of our populations, and not only involving drug trafficking, but in human trafficking, in networks of prostitution. So this has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas…

Which takes me back to personal impressions. I have, as those who follow me would expect, assiduously been checking out the bars of Caracas. I have found some very beautiful ones – Juan Sebastian Bar is one of the most lovely bars that I have ever seen. A piece of stunning interior design. I took these photos before it opened one evening. It serves mojitos even better than you can get in Havana.

That is not a mirror, those are two grand pianos!

The point is that not in my hotel, not in any bar, not on any street, have I seen a single person who appeared to be operating as a sex worker. Not one – and I might perhaps be viewed as a pretty archetypal target. Similarly I have not seen any sign at all of narcotics abuse. In two days in Salisbury investigating the Skripal hoax I was shocked by how many obvious drug addicts we saw on the streets. There is nothing of the kind in Caracas.

While I appreciate that the allegation is that Venezuela exports narcotics rather than consumes them, you always get clusters of addiction around production points and transit nodes. I just see no evidence that the common tropes about Venezuela and Venezuelans are true: and I am a trained and seasoned observer.

Sanctions against Venezuela did not start after the disputed 2024 election; they have been applied by the Western powers more or less since the very start of Chavez’s socialist experiment. The repression of socialism in Latin America has been US policy for a century, and the more Chavez succeeded the more the West sought to suppress it. France refused to provide spares for the Mirage jets of the Venezuelan air force, and equally refused to supply spare parts for the trains of the Metro service.

The gold and foreign currency reserves abroad of the government of Venezuela have simply been stolen by foreign governments, and the blocking of Venezuela from the Swift bank transfer system for a while caused havoc. It has however spurred BRICS to develop an alternative, not fully adopted, not finished but working in Venezuela, which accounts for the full stocks in the shops and ultimately might represent a significant moment in international economics.

Slowly, unwillingly, the Socialist Party under Maduro has been forced precisely by the crippling effect of sanctions to allow more space for the private sector and move from a fully socialist to a more social democratic model – though to describe the reforms under Maduro as “neoliberal” is ridiculous. It may theoretically be possible to build socialism in one country, but if the major economic powers join forces to destroy you, it becomes very difficult indeed.

A dangerously simplistic narrative about what has happened in Venezuela has taken hold in the West, fuelled by Trump, CIA and Machado/Miami sources.

On this reading, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez is in collusion with Trump, betrayed Maduro and stood down defences on the night of his kidnap, and is now instituting neoliberal policies, including a new petroleum law which states only the USA may ship Venezuelan oil and that payments for it will go exclusively through the US in Qatar.

In fact this is not true at all. Venezuela’s new petroleum legislation contains no provisions banning oil exports to China or Russia and no provision for payments to be routed through the USA. The new petroleum law is in fact legislation which sets out a new commercial basis for the operation of the Venezuelan petroleum sector on the same kind of concession, licensing and royalty basis as pertains in almost every other oil producer.

The key point is that the legislation was drafted under Maduro, with extensive consultation and debate. It came for its first reading to the Assembly literally the day after Maduro was kidnapped. That was already scheduled, not a result of the kidnapping. The notion that Maduro opposed the legislation and Rodríguez had to get rid of him to get it through is patent nonsense.

The legislation is unrelated to the United States’ current hijack of the sale of Venezuelan oil. This is proceeding through simple piracy. Trump decreed that only two companies, Vitol and Trafigura, would be allowed to load Venezuelan oil, and those companies would pay for the oil to the United States, into a special account held in Qatar under Trump’s name.

This new scheme has been enforced by simple piracy. Any tankers carrying oil not owned by Vitol and Trafigura from Venezuela have been illegally seized at sea by the US Navy, sometimes assisted by the UK government. The United States has been claiming that Venezuela agrees to this arrangement. That is not true. Or it is true in the sense that a hostage held at gunpoint agrees to stay put, rather than get a bullet through the skull.

The Venezuelan government simply has no physical ability to prevent the United States Navy from seizing oil tankers.

Nor is it true that the Venezuelan government gave the United States information on non-Vitol and -Trafigura tankers and requested their interception. Obviously the United States could get the information on “rogue” tankers from Vitol and Trafigura.

Trafigura have featured in my writing for decades as the archetypal extremely corrupt Western corporation. Their record for deliberate pollution and corruption in Africa is appalling, including in Angola and Ivory Coast. They have frequently been involved in CIA schemes for regime change.

How Vitol and Trafigura came to be the beneficiaries of a duopoly, and what backhanders that may have involved, is another question. In fact this is the one area of domestic pressure that has forced a step back from Trump, and last Friday it was announced that the arrangement will be expanded to include more companies.

It is worth noting that the system has not just been invented for Venezuela. It is almost identical to the system imposed on Iraq after its destruction by the United States and its allies, with payments for Iraqi oil made to the USA and a percentage of them returned to the Iraqi government.

The difference is that the Iraqi revenues were paid to the US Treasury, whereas the Venezuelan funds are going to a Qatar account under Trump’s personal control, removed from the reach of Congress. At its most charitable reading, it gives him a massive slush fund to pursue policy outside the United States legal framework. It is like Iran-Contra on a massive scale.

To reiterate: none of this sales arrangement has been agreed by Rodríguez and none of it is contained in the new Venezuelan hydrocarbon legislation on concessions and royalties. There are two separate things being widely conflated.

The line that Delcy Rodríguez agrees both to the kidnap of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia, and to the hijacking of Venezuelan oil sales and revenues, has been deliberately spread by the US and its acolytes, despite Delcy Rodríguez’s furious denials.

If Rodríguez really was Trump’s placed woman, then boasting about it would fatally undermine her within Venezuela and bring about her downfall – which obviously would be entirely counterproductive were there any truth in the claim.

So why is this rumour being spread? Well the obvious reason is precisely to undermine Rodríguez and destabilise the government of Venezuela.

But perhaps a more important factor is Trump’s obsessive need to claim victory. He gathered a massive military force off the coast of Venezuela, and stood in danger of mockery as the Grand Old Duke of York if he simply sailed it away again.

The seizure of Maduro has in fact changed nothing in policy terms within Venezuela, but it has provided a spectacular operation for Trump to claim as a victory. In truth, as a demonstration of the capabilities of the United States’ offensive military technology, it was indeed technically impressive.

For the removal of Maduro to be portrayed as a triumph, Trump has to claim that Rodríguez is solidly pro-USA, even though this is plainly not true. It is merely a part of the parade of triumph that is an essential component both of Trump’s ego and of the bombastic Trump method.

What now happens to Maduro and Cilia is, on this reading, not really relevant. The entirely false narrative of the non-existent Cartel de los Soles has already been abandoned as part of the prosecution. In the USA’s misnamed “justice” system, they have a variety of witness accusations from diverse figures prepared to sign nonsense against Maduro as part of a plea bargain agreement. These include rococo Trump-pleasing standouts such as testimony that Maduro was involved in fixing the 2020 US Presidential election on behalf of Biden.

My prediction is that Trump will “pardon” Maduro before the prosecution gets too silly, and present that as another part of his triumph. But who can predict a madman?

That is precisely the conundrum now facing Delcy Rodríguez. She is dealing with two imponderable equations.

The first was already difficult enough. Historians and ideologues will debate for centuries whether Chavismo could have succeeded economically with its full-on socialist programme, had the Western world not determined to destroy it with crippling sanctions.

What is I think beyond dispute is that the sanctions were so crippling that they caused considerable public hardship, and massive inflation. At the same time, the very fact that Venezuela is not highly dictatorial and both Chavez and Maduro broadly allowed debate, free opposition political parties and media, and the operation of Western-funded NGOs, meant that the Venezuelan population were continually bombarded with Western propaganda which blamed the problems caused by sanctions on the Bolivarian Revolution.

This eroded support for the socialist project, which though still intact, has crumbled at the edges. The Bolivarian government has been obliged to try to mitigate the effects of the sanctions which stole the government’s own capital, and to seek the removal of some sanctions, by the opening up of more space for capitalist investment and operation in the economy, notably but by no means only in the oil sector.

In other words the government has been forced to concede some ground to the West by inching along the spectrum from socialist to social democratic, while attempting to maintain the massive social gains of the Chavez revolution.

This is an exercise in which Nicolás Maduro himself was fully engaged. I believe that both Maduro and Rodríguez have the intention of inching back from social democracy towards socialism over time, once pressures have eased. Theirs is a game of strategy, not of tactics.

To this already extremely sensitive calculation is added the extraordinary factor of Trump. His willingness to simply kill innocent people, to shatter international law, and to impose his will by exploiting massive United States military advantage over a small country, changed all the rules of the game.

The pressure to make changes faster to appease somebody who is plainly mentally unstable, the difficulty of understanding his limits and true goals, is an excruciating experience when the lives and deaths of Venezuelans are in your hands. Trump’s incredible bombast, his wild claims that Venezuelan land and oil is stolen from the USA, are not contained within the realm of normal diplomatic negotiation.

Delcy Rodríguez is not so much walking a tightrope, as navigating an Indiana Jones tunnel full of traps.

One thing that Trump has in fact got right is his contention that Machado does not have the public support to rule. This seems to me indisputable, and an attempt to impose her would result in civil war. This of course in itself undermines the contention that Machado’s team massively won the 2024 election.

Meanwhile life in Venezuela goes on for ordinary people. I had the great pleasure to attend a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra on Sunday. It was very accomplished, and the auditorium was full. The programme was entirely of Venezuelan composers, and I had never heard any of the music before. The opening symphonic poem by Juan Bautista Plaza would stand alongside the European repertoire without blushing.

I make no apologies for bringing little slices of ordinary life to you, because the picture we have been given of Venezuela is so strangely and massively distorted, it requires multiple points of correction.

Chavez instituted a programme of musical education for working-class children that became the envy of the classical music world, known simply as La Sistema. Much more heart-rending examples of Western sanctions might be found, involving medical provision. But as an example of the cruel absurdity of the sanctions regime, the youth orchestra of Venezuela has difficulties getting hold of simple consumables – strings, reeds, plectra – because of sanctions.

In bringing violin strings to a child I should be committing a crime in the United States of America. Let that be a testament to the absurdity of using sanctions to crush human spirit.

I am very aware I have not left Caracas yet and of the limitations of my experience so far. But I am already struck by the great advantage of being here over commentators in the West who I see daily, even when well-intentioned, getting it all wrong. The mainstream media of course produce a fake narrative entirely as a matter of policy.

I am delighted to say that today our new videographer and editor are starting and we will be able to bring you video content. I also hope today to conclude rent of an office/studio space.

We now have a Venezuela reporting crowdfunder. I have simply edited the Lebanese GoFundMe crowdfunder, because that took many weeks to be approved and I don’t want to go through all that again. So its starting baseline is the £35,000 we raised and spent in Lebanon.

I do very much appreciate that I have been simultaneously crowdfunding to fight the UK government in the Scottish courts over the proscription of Palestine Action. We fight forces that have unlimited funds. We can only succeed if we spread the load. 98% of those who read my articles never contribute financially. This would be a good moment to change that. It is just the simple baseline subscriptions to my blog that have got me to Venezuela, and that remains the foundation for all my work.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of subscription payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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I attach the full text of Lord Young’s decision granting the Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine.

A few points. Judicial Review can only be granted where the judge believes it has a realistic chance of success. Lord Young evidently believes that we have a realistic chance of success on our three grounds – failure to consult, disproportionate limitation of freedom of assembly, disproportionate limitation of freedom of speech.

This was not even disputed at hearing.

On the disputed points – my standing and the jurisdiction of the court – we won on all points.

Lord Young’s ruling explicitly means that a Scot can always go to Scottish courts against an infringement of their human rights, no matter if identical action is being taken in England. It emphasises the independence and equality of the Scottish judicial system.

On consultation, there is one outstanding fact that I wish to bring to your attention. In England it is being argued – correctly – that while the Home Office consulted the Israeli Embassy, weapons manufacturers and communities including for some reason Lebanese Christians, they failed to consult any Palestinians, any pro-Palestinian organisation, any human rights organisation. They plainly and selectively consulted only those they thought would agree with them.

And to the point here they consulted with nobody – literally nobody – in Scotland. Not the Scottish Government. Not Police Scotland. Not the Scottish counter terrorist strategy board (CONTEST). Yvette Cooper just imposed the proscription on Scotland with no consultation at all.

COS-P1017-25 Pet: Craig Murray for J/R
Halliday Campbell WS Office of the Advocate General
26 January 2026 Lord Young

The Lord Ordinary, having considered the petition and answers thereto, and being satisfied that the test in Section 27B(2) of the Court of Session Act 1988 has been met, and for the reasons given in the note attached hereto, grants permission for the petition to proceed; assigns 23 February 2026 at 10am as the date for the procedural hearing; assigns 17 and 18 of March 2026 at 10am as the dates for the substantive hearing; both hearings within the Court of Session, Parliament Square, Edinburgh, and to be held before the Hon. Lord Young; further, makes the following case management orders:-

1. allows parties to adjust their pleadings until two weeks prior to the date of the procedural hearing; and to lodge final versions of their pleadings no later than one week prior to the procedural hearing;
2. appoints parties to mark up any relevant documents to indicate the parts they intend to rely on no later than one week prior to the procedural hearing;
3. appoints notes of argument to be lodged no later than one week prior to the procedural hearing;
4. appoints statements of issues to be lodged no later than one week prior to the procedural hearing;
5. appoints affidavits to be lodged in respect of those facts founded on by a party at the substantive hearing no later than one week prior to the procedural hearing;
6. appoints parties to write to the court to confirm whether they are ready to proceed to the substantive hearing no later than one week prior to the procedural hearing;
7. appoints parties to lodge a list and bundle of authorities, which should be marked up to indicate the parts the party intends to rely on no later than 10 days prior to the substantive hearing.

Andrew Young

Note –

1. By interlocutor of even date, and following an oral hearing, I granted permission for the petitioner to proceed with his petition for judicial review as required by section 27B of the Court of Session Act 1988. In this Note, I set out the reasons for my decision.
2. By interlocutor dated 11 December 2025, I asked to be addressed by parties in relation to two issues raised in the Answers lodged by the respondent, namely (i) whether the petitioner had a sufficient interest to give him standing to proceed with this petition, and (ii) whether it was appropriate or necessary for these proceedings to proceed given the existence of identical proceedings in England.
3. At the oral hearing, senior counsel for the respondent took a somewhat neutral position on the question of standing. He noted that the averments in the petition in relation to the petitioner’s standing were brief but acknowledged that affidavits had now been produced which provided more information as to the petitioner’s role as a supporter of Palestine Action. He accepted that the affidavits were truthful and that the petitioner did not have the “busybody” characteristic referred to in some of the legal authorities. After noting that standing is context specific, senior counsel was content to leave the matter for the court’s decision. I did not require to be addressed by senior counsel for the petitioner on this issue. I am satisfied that the petitioner’s role over recent years as an active supporter of Palestine Action and his strategic involvement in some of their protest actions, provides him with standing in relation to an organisation which does not have a conventional structure.
4. On behalf of the respondent, I was informed that the judicial review proceedings before the High Court in England had involved a hearing over three days in November and December 2025. One day of those proceedings had taken place under the closed material procedure. The judgment was still awaited. An appeal might reasonably be anticipated to the Court of Appeal, or potentially direct to the Supreme Court. On behalf of the respondent, it was argued that the issues within the current petition are identical to those heard in the English court. There is no bespoke Scottish argument which merits separate proceedings in Scotland. Any proceedings in Scotland are likely to require closed material procedure for part of the hearing which will present practical difficulties. I was referred to R (Liberty) v Prime Minister & Anor [2020] 1 WLR 1193 at paras [26]-[31] in which the Court of Appeal discussed certain matters of policy where issues common throughout the UK are the subject of judicial review proceedings in more than one UK jurisdiction. Senior counsel for the respondent identified three potential ways forward. The first option was to refuse the petitioner permission to proceed. The second option was to reserve the issue of permission and sist the current cause until a decision was available in the English proceedings. The third option was to grant permission followed by an immediate sist until the decision in the English proceedings was available and had been digested.
5. Senior counsel for the petitioner submitted that the relevancy of the English proceedings was unfocussed in the respondent’s Answers. The existence of the English proceedings had not been advanced as the basis for any plea-in-law challenging this court’s jurisdiction. It was observed that any decision in England could not found a plea of res judicata in Scotland. A Scottish court would not be required by precedent to follow any decision of the High Court in England. There had been a number of recent examples of important constitutional challenges proceeding in parallel in Scotland and England. Those cases demonstrated that different decisions might be taken in the lower courts for ultimate adjudication in the Supreme Court. While the current petition did not include an argument peculiar to Scots law, it could not be ruled out that adjustment of the petition might introduce an issue which was not before the English courts. In relation to the decision in R (Liberty) v Prime Minister, this was a decision of the Court of Appeal on a case management issue. The Court of Appeal had not had the benefit of a full citation of the relevant authorities. The proscription of Palestine Action directly affected a number of individuals in Scotland who were facing criminal prosecutions. They had a right to have this restriction on their legal rights challenged before a court in Scotland. The court should grant permission. The respondent’s subsidiary motions for a sist should also be refused for the same reasons.
6. I am satisfied that it is appropriate to grant permission for this judicial review to proceed in Scotland notwithstanding the existence of English proceedings which are at a more advanced stage. As a matter of principle, a petitioner who has standing and whose petition sets out arguments of sufficient merit to satisfy s27B(2)(b) of the 1988 Act should not be refused permission because of the existence of parallel proceedings in another UK jurisdiction. The petitioner claims that his legal rights have been illegally circumscribed by the 2025 Order.
   He is entitled to look to the courts of his place of residence for a determination of that complaint. The cases of Cherry v Advocate General 2020 SC 37 and R (Miller) v Prime Minister [2019] EWHC 2381 support the petitioner’s argument that there is nothing inherently objectionable with proceedings on the same issue progressing through different jurisdictions within the UK at the same time. There is no suggestion that these proceedings are being advanced for an improper or abusive purpose such as a campaign to swamp the respondent with a multitude of proceedings. The possibility that any substantive hearing in this petition will require the adoption of closed material procedure is not a factor of any weight to the issue of permission. The necessary arrangements will be put in place if the closed material procedure is required.
7. I did not find the decision in R (Liberty) v The Prime Minister to be of any direct assistance to the issue before me. It involved discussion of a request for an expediated hearing in judicial review proceedings where similar proceedings had already been completed before the Outer and Inner Houses of the Court of Session. The case was not concerned with the granting of permission to proceed under the relevant English rules. It involved a discussion of case management issues in a case already proceeding through the courts. Wider issues are involved, including judicial resources, when an issue of case management is under consideration.
8. For these reasons, I grant permission for the petition to proceed. For the avoidance of any doubt, my decision is not influenced by the suggestion tentatively floated by senior counsel for the petitioner that the petition might yet be developed to include a Scottish angle to the arguments.
9. I also refuse, in hoc statu, the respondent’s motion that these proceedings should be sisted. As observed above, case management may involve consideration of factors beyond those relevant at the permission stage. I am not satisfied that it is appropriate to sist these proceedings immediately after granting permission. The better course of action is for parties to proceed through the usual stages of a procedural hearing towards a full substantive hearing which I shall provisionally fix for 2 days. This procedure will enable the final shape of these proceedings to be better understood. It is, of course, open to either party to seek a sist or some alternative procedure once there is clarity as to the position in England. Any such motion would be considered on its merits at that time.

Author: Lauren Bell Cunningham
This document has been electronically authenticated and requires no wet signature.

IN THE COURT OF SESSION
AFFIDAVIT OF HUDA AMMORI
IN THE PETITION
of
CRAIG MURRAY, residing at Edinburgh EH10
PETITIONER

For judicial review of the Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

At on the NINTH day of JANUARY 2026, in the presence by way of remote video conferencing software of Lynn Littlejohn McMahon, solicitor and notary public, Halliday Campbell WS, solicitors, Edinburgh, EH16,
COMPEARED HUDA AMMORI, who being solemnly sworn hereby DEPONES as follows:-

1. My name is Huda Ammori, I am a co-founder of Palestine Action.
2. Palestine Action was a network of individuals and groups which supported, and took, direct action against weapons companies which were involved in the destruction of Palestine and the ongoing massacres of the Palestinian people.
3. The group’s main focus was the Israeli weapons industry operating in Britain. Specifcally, Elbit Systems, which is Israel’s biggest weapons manufacturer.
4. Craig Murray and I had met in person when myself, Richard Barnard (also a co-founder of Palestine Action), and others, were housed together for The World Transformed festival in Liverpool. We were all there as speakers for various parts of the event.
5. During this time, we had exchanged contact details and I had asked Craig Murray if he would support us in increasing awareness of the various court cases that were taking place as part of Palestine Action. He was happy to help, and ever since, had become very involved in Palestine Action.
6. In May 2023, Craig Murray was also part of a mass protest action by Palestine Action against UAV Tactical Systems, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems. The protest was publicly called for by Palestine Action, for supporters of the network to attend and be a part of the action, all of which was under the Palestine Action banner.
7. The purpose of the mass action, was for people to hold a constant presence outside the factory to disrupt the production of Israeli drones. Not only was Craig Murray a part of this action, he had also reported on it for his blog: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/05/freedom-of-speech-elbit-and-fascist-policing/ (print-out annexed hereto)
8. In the summer of 2023, both myself, Richard Barnard and Craig Murray were speakers at ‘The Rebel Tent’, a part of the Beautiful Days festival. During this time, Craig Murray had also spoken to the crowd about Palestine Action’s aims and objectives.
9. As part of his solidarity work with Palestine Action, Craig Murray would also attend trial in support of those facing criminal charges for taking direct action. This included the plea hearing of Richard Barnard, who was facing charges relating to two speeches he had made in support of Palestine Action in October 2023.
10. Craig Murray had supported Richard Barnard, as he did with many people facing criminal charges for their involvement with Palestine Action. He was part of the protest at the Old Bailey for Richard Barnard, with myself. He had also raised awareness of the proceedings online, through his large platform, which also significantly helped mobilise support for the case.
11. It’s important to note that the slogan ‘We are all Palestine Action’ was popularised, as the network encompassed those taking direct action and joining protests, and those also supporting the court cases and spreading awareness of the aims of the group and the challenges we faced.
12. Not only was Craig Murray actively supporting Palestine Action online, sharing actions, and raising awareness of Palestine Action’s aims and strategy, he also had joined the mass action himself against Elbit Systems’ UAV Tactical Systems factory.
13. I also consider him a close friend and a confidant, who I would regularly speak to about the challenges myself and others personally faced due to state repression of Palestine Action. For the above reasons, I believe it is clear that Craig Murray was both involved and an active supporter of Palestine Action and is therefore extremely well placed to legally challenge the proscription of Palestine Action.

All of which is truth as the deponent shall answer to God.

Declared by way of video conference, and signed electronically
this NINTH day of January 2026 at Glasgow
before me, Lynn Littlejohn McMahon, Solicitor and Notary Public, via video conference
which I attended at Glasgow, G11
Lynn Littlejohn McMahon
Edinburgh
Solicitor and Notary Public

IN THE COURT OF SESSION
AFFIDAVIT OF CRAIG JOHN MURRAY
IN THE PETITION
of
CRAIG MURRAY, residing at Edinburgh EH10
PETITIONER

For judicial review of the Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

At Edinburgh on the NINTH day of JANUARY 2026, in the presence of David James Finlay Halliday, solicitor and notary public, Halliday Campbell WS, solicitors, Edinburgh, EH16 5PQ, COMPEARED CRAIG JOHN MURRAY, residing at Edinburgh, EH10 who being solemnly sworn hereby DEPONES as follows:-

1. I am Craig John Murray, born 17 October 1958, resident at Edinburgh EH10.
2. I am a journalist in alternative media, retired diplomat and British Ambassador, and a campaigning political activist.
3. I have a particular interest in Palestine, having campaigned on the issue since I first joined the Friends of Palestine in 1977, with a hiatus during my period in the FCO. I also have a particular long-term interest in freedom of speech issues.
4. I supported Palestine Action since its inception. I had frequently for decades expressed the view that Palestinians have been subject to ethnic cleansing and genocide for over seven decades. This did not start on October 7 2023. I therefore strongly supported the efforts of Palestine Action to disrupt the Israeli defence industry’s procurement and manufacturing infrastructure in this country.
5. I still support direct action against Israeli interests, in particular in view of the accelerated genocide of the last two years. I believe that the proscription of Palestine Action constrains my human right to freedom of expression, as a part of its general chilling effect upon journalism and upon individuals.
6. As my main income comes from subscriptions to my published blog, the curtailment of my ability there to write of redacted Palestine Action also affects my professional career and directly my income.
7. I do not support terrorism nor violence against individuals; neither does Palestine Action. The notion that constraining my human right to express my views is a necessary measure to combat terrorism is, in my view, absurd.
8. I was myself subject to detention under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act at Glasgow Airport on 19 October 2023, and questioned by police on my views and activism on Palestine. My mobile telephone and laptop computer were confiscated and I received a letter stating I am under continued investigation (which to my knowledge has not been closed).
9. The United Nations has queried with the British government the arbitrary nature of my de facto arrest in a letter dated 4 December 2024 which it sent to the British Government. A copy of the letter is produced as Annex 1 to this Affidavit.
10. On 10 and 11 May 2023 – over two years before proscription – I participated in a Palestine Action picket at the Elbit factory outside the city of Leicester. Elbit is Israel’s leading weapons manufacturer and responsible for many of the weapons that have been massacring tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
11. As is the case with the vast majority of Palestine Action events, this was an entirely peaceful protest. Over the two days I was there it consisted of nine people, on the pavement opposite the factory, causing no disruption whatsoever. Nonetheless the police attempted to disperse us, my first encounter with the gross abuse and denial of citizens’ rights in the UK in support of the Israeli defence industry.
12. I published immediately two articles on my website detailing my experience, stating that this was a specifically Palestine Action event and providing a link to Palestine Action’s website. My articles make clear that I was there as a supporter and activist, not merely as a journalist. Copies of the articles, titled “Freedom of Speech: Elbit and Fascist Policing” and “Now Protest Is a Moral Duty”, are produced as, respectively, Annex 2 and Annex 3 to this Affidavit.
13. Almost since its foundation I have had direct contact with Palestine Action’s founders, Richard Barnard and Huda Ammori. I have shared a flat with them when lobbying the Labour Party conference in Liverpool almost three years ago. I have advised them on legal representation. I have turned up to support Richard when he was charged with terrorism offences at the Old Bailey, and spent some hours strategising with them after that event.
14. I have attended the hearings at the High Court and Court of Appeal in London on the proscription of Palestine Action, reported on them, and discussed legal strategy for the plaintiff Huda Ammori with both Huda Ammori and, with Huda’s consent, directly with Gareth Peirce, Raza Husain KC and Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC.
15. Palestine Action did not have a membership structure. I was therefore not a member before its dissolution. I was however an active collaborator.
16. I was in the public gallery at the International Court of Justice in the Hague for the hearings in South Africa v Israel on Israel’s alleged breach of the Genocide Convention.
17. From October 2024 to February 2025 (with a short festive season break) I was resident in Lebanon reporting from the ground on Israeli attacks on Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and Southern Lebanon.
18. I am concerned at the extreme and disproportionate effect of the proscription of Palestine Action not just as a supporter of Palestine, but also as a supporter of free speech. I have written frequently on freedom of speech and assembly issues.
19. Notably I have published articles on individual attacks on free speech, such as the prosecution of Mark Hirst. On March 21 2024 I published an article attacking Scotland’s new hate speech legislation on freedom of speech grounds. I take the unfashionable view of defending the free speech even of those with whose views I profoundly disagree – for example I published an article against the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly. A copy of these articles, titled “Scotland’s Hate Speech Act and Abuse of Process and “Lucy Connolly Should Be Released” are produced as, respectively, Annex 4 and Annex 5 to this Affidavit.
20. I would argue that anybody whose rights are constrained by the proscription of Palestine Action should have standing to challenge it. That an executive action which limits the rights of everybody equally cannot be challenged as it therefore does not limit the rights of anybody in particular, is an absurd contention.
21. But if particular status is needed I have it. I have participated in Palestine Action protests and have demonstrably supported them. I am a colleague and collaborator of Palestine Action’s founders. I am a journalist whose freedom of expression is being curtailed disproportionately. I have a demonstrable long-term particular interest in Palestine and in Article X and XI freedoms.
22. I am a Scot. I live in Scotland. Scotland is where I wish to publish my views redacted Palestine Action. Scotland is where my established Article X and XI human rights are being infringed.
23. I wish to seek the protection of the courts in my own jurisdiction against executive infringement of my rights within this jurisdiction.
24. As I understand it, the Scottish courts are not subservient or junior to the courts of England and Wales. Their opinion is equally valid and – crucially – the courts of Scotland have the absolute right to take a different view, even in a very similar or identical matter, to the court of England and Wales.
25. The disproportionate effect of the proscription of Palestine Action on individuals in Scotland has been appalling. Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested on absurd pretence of “terrorism”.
26. Terrorism-related charges are life changing. They do not only bring potential imprisonment. They bring loss of employment, debanking and loss of access to money, and severe international travel restriction.
27. I have met entirely decent people in Scotland who have suffered all these consequences of the proscription. I have met an elderly female pensioner whose home was raided and searched by counter terrorism police in the early hours in front of her young grandchildren.
28. On 18 August 2025 I travelled to Dunoon for the court appearance of Bill Williamson, aged 73. Bill had been arrested in Dunoon High Street on 16 August 2025 at a regular weekly vigil for Palestine, for displaying a sign allegedly supporting Palestine Action. He was handcuffed in public and led away by four policemen. He was told he was arrested for a terrorism offence.
29. Bill, a man of impeccable character who is a stroke victim, was kept in the police cells all weekend, for two nights, with no food given to him suitable to his diet. He was produced at Dunoon Sherrif Court on Monday afternoon but released without – so far – any charge. This kind of disgusting treatment of a respectable elderly Scottish citizen exercising the right of peaceful protest and assembly in a small town like Dunoon is precisely the kind of disproportionate nonsense I want a judicial review to stop. A copy of the article published on the website of the Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard on 21 August 2025, titled “Dunoon’s pro-Palestine protestor ‘liberated’” is produced as Annex 6 to this Affidavit.
30. It is not only those accused of supporting Palestine Action who have suffered dreadful abuse of their rights in Scotland since the proscription. Prior to the proscription, nobody taking direct action against the Israeli arms supply chain in Scotland had been charged with terrorism-related offences.
31. On 17 July 2025 three women were arrested in a direct action at Leonardo weapons factory in Edinburgh which allegedly slightly damaged a security fence. The action is not alleged to relate to Palestine Action.
32. Nevertheless the women were treated as terrorism offenders and their treatment by police was appalling. They were transferred to Govan Police Station where they were held in the special terrorism unit without charge for five days. They were held incommunicado in this time.
33. At the request of the support group for the women and of the women’s families, with which I had direct contact, I arranged for the best available legal representation for the women. However the police refused to pass on the details of the arranged legal representatives to the women.
34. They also refused to allow their families to contact the women. I had given details of the arranged legal representatives to the families but the police also refused to allow the families to communicate this to the women. They therefore arrived in court for charging unaware that alternative legal representation had been arranged for them to the standard duty solicitors with which they had been provided.
35. I understand that this keeping of the women incommunicado and therefore not allowing them information on choice of legal representation was entirely because of the different way alleged “terrorists” are treated.
36. The women were informed by police they were being charged under the Terrorism Act, but at the court itself they learned that this had been replaced by charges “aggravated” by terrorism.
37. The Scottish Counter Terrorism Strategy Board (CONTEST) includes the Scottish Government, Police Scotland, security services, COSLA and others (I believe including the Crown Office). The CONTEST minutes for May 2025, released under the Freedom of Information Act, include the following:

“Palestine Action Group (PAG)

Palestine Action are extremely active in Scotland, particularly within the protest activity space. This is a co-ordinated group, which is known for escalating violence in other parts of the UK.

Currently within Scotland, this group has been focused on protest activity which has not been close to meeting the statutory definition of terrorism; CT policing continues to monitor their activity and are prepared to intervene where necessary”

A copy of the extract of the minutes is produced as Annex 7 to this Affidavit.

38. Five UN Special Rapporteurs have submitted to the English judicial review that UK counter-terrorism legislation fails to meet international standards in conflating property damage not endangering life with terrorism. A copy of a press release titled “UN experts urge United Kingdom not to misuse terrorism laws against protest group Palestine Action” issued by The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on 1 July 2025 is produced as Annex 8 to this Affidavit.
39. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights himself, Mr Volker Turk, has urged the UK government to rescind the proscription, stating:

“I urge the UK Government to rescind its decision to proscribe Palestine Action and to halt investigations and further proceedings against protesters who have been arrested on the basis of this proscription. I also call on the UK Government to review and revise its counter-terrorism legislation, including its definition of terrorist acts, to bring it fully in line with international human rights norms and standards.”

A copy of a press release titled “UK: Palestine Action ban ‘disturbing’ misuse of UK counter-terrorism legislation, Türk warns” issued by The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on 1 July 2025 is produced as Annex 9 to this Affidavit.

40. In the Scottish legal tradition sovereignty rests with the people, not with the Crown in parliament.
41. In the English legal and constitutional tradition, parliament may do anything, be it ever so authoritarian. Parliament could legislate to repeal the Human Rights Act or cancel elections, and English courts would likely uphold that if properly passed through parliament and approved by the Crown.
42. I believe that the Scottish tradition of legal thought and practice should and does provide greater protection for the people from arbitrary and oppressive government, as expressed in the still in force Claim of Right. That is why I believe it is important for a Scottish court to hear this judicial review in Scotland for the protection of the people of Scotland from what I see as an arbitrary, oppressive, politically motivated and intellectually absurd executive action.
43. This affidavit addresses the issues of standing for the hearing on 12 January, not the whole matter for judicial review.

All of which is truth as the deponent shall answer to God.

Signed this ninth day of January 2026 at Edinburgh
before me, David James Finlay Halliday, Solicitor and Notary Public
Edinburgh

IN THE COURT OF SESSION
AFFIDAVIT OF DR ELIZABETH JANE ELDRIDGE
IN THE PETITION
of
CRAIG MURRAY, residing at Edinburgh EH10
PETITIONER

For judicial review of the Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

At GLASGOW on the EIGHTH day of JANUARY 2026, in the presence of Lynn Littlejohn McMahon, solicitor and notary public, Halliday Campbell WS, solicitors, Edinburgh, EH16 COMPEARED DR ELIZABETH JANE ELDRIDGE, Glasgow, G44 who being solemnly sworn hereby DEPONES as follows:–

My full name is Dr Elizabeth Jane Eldridge. I am also known as Lizzie Eldridge. My date of birth is 4 December 1967. My home address is Glasgow, G44.

1. I am a writer, a business English teacher and a former university lecturer. I obtained an MA(Hons) from the University of Glasgow in sociology and theatre in 1988,and then obtained a PHD from Lancaster University in 1993.
2. 1 am currently the Vice President of the Scottish branch of PEN International. PEN is an organisation that defends freedom of expression and campaigns on behalf of writers suffering censorship, oppression, imprisonment and even death. I lived in Malta for 12 years and came back to Scotland at the end of 2019. I got involved with Scottish PEN almost immediately upon my return, and I have been Vice President for one year now.
3. I’ve always been involved in Human Rights since I was in my teens. To my shame, Palestine largely disappeared from my line of vision for a while until the May 2022 assassination of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the IDF. I was heavily involved with Scottish PEN by then. I alerted them and we arranged for a statement to be put out. When the genocide of the Palestinian people began in Oct 2023, I got involved in protests at that stage, and I have been doing everything that I can since then to help, including writing for the Palestine Chronicle and appearing on the Palestine International Broadcast.
4. I know of the Palestine Action group, but I am not directly involved with them. I do have connections with people formerly involved with Palestine Action, but I have never been involved in any direct action or anything like that myself.
5. I have a friend from Edinburgh who has been in prison since August 2024. She was allegedly one of the activists who took direct action at the Elbit Systems factory in Filton, Bristol. She is known now as one of the “Filton 24”. Arrested under the Terrorism Act (2000), she has been detained since then without trial, and has been deprived of basic prison rights and bail. Her period of detention, like that of her co-defendants, far exceeds the maximum 6 month period of detention, and the treatment of the Filton 24 (then Filton 18) has been strongly criticised by UN Human Rights experts [https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/un-experts-intervene-filton-18-palestine-action-case] (Annex 1 hereto)
6. The Filton action was prior to the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, but I feel this was part of the build up to proscription.
7. In the space of one year, since November 2024, I have been arrested three times. I had never been arrested or in any trouble with the law before that.
8. Since the genocide in Palestine began, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee (“GGEC”) have been holding weekly protests outside 8arclays Bank in Glasgow. I participate in the protests weekly. On 2 November 2024, the protest had just ended, and we were all heading home,when suddenly people started shouting about someone being arrested. It was a young Palestinian woman who is a friend of mine. I asked the police what they were doing, and under what powers they were arresting my friend. There were three male police officers arresting her. I put my hand on her arm whilst I was talking. The police said that if l didn’t remove my hand they would arrest me. I said that she hasn’t done anything wrong. They arrested me for“obstruction” and put me and my friend in handcuffs in Argyll Street, put us in a van, and took us to Govan Police Station. I was held in a cell for 5hours. It was not a nice experience. I was given very restrictive bail conditions, which I eventually had to accept, rather than stay in the cell until Monday. One bail condition was that I wasn’t allowed in Glasgow City Centre at all. Three weeks later, I went to court and thankfully the Sheriff agreed that the bail condition was too restrictive and that was overturned.
9. I was back in court in January 2025 for a pre-hearing, and that’s when I discovered that a new charge of breach of the peace had been added to the obstruction charge. I represented myself, and I pled not guilty. The next time I appeared in court was in May 2025. The police gave evidence saying”all hell broke loose” but the video evidence showed very clearly that we were not causing any problems at all. The Sheriff said that senior police “gave unreliable evidence” which I understand to be as close as a Sheriff can get to saying that they lied. The Sheriff also allowed evidence from the bank manager of Barclays, who said that he didn’t see me cause any disturbance. I was acquitted of Breach of the Peace, but I had to return to court in August with letters of support re the obstruction charge. The Sheriff was satisfied that I was of good character, and gave me an absolute discharge. It was a huge relief.
10. In between all that, in April 2025, I took part in a protest at Aberdeen Bowling Club, against an Israeli player taking part in an International Bowling Competition. Petitions had been signed trying to prevent him taking part, but he did anyway. In the end, I ran onto the green with a Palestine flag my friend had hidden when we went in as spectators. I made my objections clear by shouting, and I was arrested and put in a van. The police never did take me to a police station though, they just let me out the van. I call this my “invisible arrest”.
11. My third arrest was on 6 September 2025. I was attending a protest in front of Queen Elizabeth House on Sibbald Walk in Edinburgh. It was a protest organised jointly by Defend our Juries, and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Some people had placards saying, ”I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action. I didn’t have a placard. I was standing at the back, wearing a t-shirt, which read “Genocide in Palestine, Time to Take Action”. The words “Palestine” and “Action” were both written in a larger font. According to the police citation, ’you LIZZIE ELDRIDGE did wear an item of clothing namely, t-shirt in such a way or in such Circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that you were a member or Supporter of a proscribed organisation as defined by the aforementioned Act namely, Palestine Action, in that you did wear said t-shirt; CONTRARY to the Terrorism Act 2000, Section 1 3 (1) (a) as amended’
12. I was not arrested there and then, nobody was. I was actually thinking at the time, “what a shame for the placard guys, no doubt they will cop trouble for that”, as I knew Palestine Action has been proscribed as a terrorist group by then. However, nearly two weeks later, there was a knock at my door whilst I was teaching a student business English in an online session. It was two plain clothed police officers. They started talking about the protest in Edinburgh, and I said the timing “was inconvenient, could they come back in 10 minutes, after my lesson”, and they agreed. When I opened the door 10 minutes later, they were standing in precisely the same positions I had left them. They said they were there to arrest me under the Terrorism Act. Again, I said the timing was inconvenient, I had other lessons, and asked them to come back at 1pm. They agreed. It was all a bit farcical. as the police were very apologetic when they came back, and they were perfectly nice, and even asked me for directions to Cathcart Police Station, as they were from Edinburgh. I wasn’t handcuffed, I was only in the police station for an hour, and after taking my mugshot and fingerprints, they let me go, with no bail conditions. Which I found to be pretty surreat if they really thought me to be a terrorist.
13. In December, a counter terrorism police document was leaked, which gave advice to the police on how to deal with protestors post proscription of Palestine Action. The wording on my t-shirt was specifically referred to, and was said explicitly not to be an arrestable offence. https://www.declassifieduk.org/palestine-action-policing-guidance-suggests-protesters-wrongly arrested/j (Annex 2 hereto) However,I (together with a number of others in a similar situation) received letters from the police, claiming that they could take action against us, but they would offer to just give us a warning for potential terrorism instead. We all decided that there was no way we were agreeing to that. A warning stays on your record for 2 years and can be used against you. We met and symbolically burned our letters at a public protest in Edinburgh on 22 November 2025.
14. Then, on the Saturday before Christmas there, I received a police citation giving me a court hearing date of 21 January 2026.
15. On a personal and professional level, I would say that thèse experiences have led me to be shocked at the erosion of human rights and civil liberties in our country.

Truth as solemnly declared
before me, Lynn Littlejohn McMahon, Solicitor and Notary Public
Edinburgh, EH16

I am very optimistic now we have won this stage. But I am afraid the full judicial review is going to be very expensive. We need everyone who can contribute to contribute, even if it is only a pound, dollar or euro. And we need everyone who already contributed to think of another person who they can ask to contribute. All of us have to look towards people we know of good heart with means.

If we succeed, we will save many scores of people from the life-changing consequences of a terrorism sentence and from possible jail. But PLEASE do not contribute if you really cannot afford it – we are trying to make people’s lives better, not worse.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/

I know these are the most difficult of times. But that is why we have to keep fighting. The sums needed to mount a successful legal challenge to the power of the state can be eye-watering. But we are the many. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship. You can contribute via the crowdfunder above or via these methods:

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Venezuela GoFundMe

I have now been in Caracas for 48 hours and the contrast between what I have seen, and what I had read in the mainstream media, could not be more stark.

I drove right through Caracas, from the airport through the city centre and up to posh Las Mercedes. The next morning I walked all through and weaved my way within the working class district of San Agustin. I joined in the “Afrodescendants festival”, and spent hours mingling with the people. I was made extremely welcome and invited into many homes – this from a district they tell you is extremely dangerous.

I must admit I had great fun at this bit.

After this I continued on for miles walking through the residential area and through the heart of the city centre, including Bolivar Square and the National Assembly.

In all of this I have not seen one single checkpoint, whether police or military. I have seen almost no guns; fewer than you would see on a similar tour taking in Whitehall. I have not been stopped once, whether on foot or in a car. I have seen absolutely zero sign of “Chavista militia” whether in poor, wealthy or central areas. I drove extensively round the opposition strongholds of Las Mercedes and Altamira and quite literally saw not a single armed policemen, not one militia man and not one soldier. People were out and about quite happily and normally. There was no feeling of repression whatsoever.

Again, nobody stopped me or asked who I am or why I was taking pictures. I did ask the Venezuelan authorities whether I needed a permit to take photos and publish articles, and their reply was a puzzled “why would you?”

The military checkpoints to maintain control, the roving gangs of Chavista armed groups, all the media descriptions of Caracas today are entirely a figment of CIA and Machado propaganda, simply regurgitated by a complicit billionaire and state media.

Do you know what else do not exist? The famous “shortages.” The only thing in short supply is shortage. There is a shortage of shortage. There is no shortage of anything in Venezuela.

A few weeks ago I saw on Twitter a photo of a supermarket in Caracas which somebody had put up to demonstrate that the shelves are extremely well stocked. It received hundreds of replies, either claiming it was a fake, or that it was an elite supermarket for the wealthy and that the shops for the majority were empty.

So I made a point, in working-class districts, of going into the neighbourhood, front room stores where ordinary people do their shopping. They were all very well stocked. There were no empty places on shelves. I also went round outdoor and covered markets, including an improbably huge one with over a hundred stalls catering solely for children’s birthday parties!

Everyone was quite happy to let me photograph anything I wanted. It is not just groceries. Hardware stores, opticians, clothes and shoe shops, electronic goods, auto parts. Everything is freely available.

There is a lack of physical currency. Sanctions have limited the Venezuelan government’s access to secure printing. To get round this, everybody does secure payment with their phones via QR code using the Venezuelan Central Bank’s own ingenious app. This is incredibly well established – even the most basic street vendors have their QR code displayed and get their payments this way. Can you spot the QR codes on these street stalls?

To get a Venezuelan phone and sim card for the internet I went to a mall which specialises in phones. It was extraordinary. Four storeys of little phone and computer shops, all packed with goods, organised in three concentric circles of tiered balconies. This photo is just the inner circle. I picked up a phone, sim card, lapel microphones, power bank, multi-system extension lead and ethernet to USB adapter, all in the first little store I entered.

Registering the sim was quick and simple. There is good 4G everywhere I have been in Caracas, and some spots of 5G.

“Relaxed” is a word I would use for Venezuelans. You could forgive paranoia, the country having been bombed by the Americans just three weeks ago and many people killed. You might expect hostility to a rather strange old gringo wandering around inexplicably snapping random things. But I have experienced no sense of hostility at all, from people or officials.

The African festival was instructive. A community event and not a political rally, there were nevertheless numerous spontaneous shouts and chants for Maduro. The Catholic priest giving the blessing at the festivities suddenly started talking of the genocide in Gaza and everybody prayed for Palestine. Community and cultural figures continually referenced socialism.

This is the natural environment here. None of it is forced. Chavez empowered the downtrodden and improved their lives in a spectacular manner, for which there are few parallels. The result is genuine popular enthusiasm and a level of public working-class engagement with political thought that it is impossible to compare to the UK today. It is the antithesis of the hollowed out culture that has spawned Reform.

I am very wary of Western journalists who parachute into a country and become instant experts. Although the stark contradiction between actual Caracas and Western-media Caracas is so extreme that I can bring it to you immediately.

Pretty well everything that I have read by Western journalists which can be immediately checked – checkpoints, armed political gangs, climate of fear, shortages of food and goods – turns out to be an absolute lie. I did not know this before I came. Possibly neither did you. We both do now.

I had lived for years in Nigeria and Uzbekistan under real dictatorships and I know what they feel like. I can tell sullen compliance from real engagement. I can tell spontaneous from programmed political expression. This is no dictatorship.

I am, so far as I can judge, the only Western journalist in Venezuela now. The idea that you should actually see for yourself what is happening, rather than reproduce what the Western governments and their agents tell you is happening, appears utterly out of fashion with our mainstream media. I am sure this is deliberate.

When I was in Lebanon a year ago, the mainstream media were entirely absent as Israel devastated Dahiya, the Bekaa Valley, and Southern Lebanon, because it was a narrative they did not want to report.

Disgracefully, the only time the BBC entered Southern Lebanon was from the Israeli side, embedded with the IDF.

The BBC, Guardian or New York Times simply will not send a correspondent to Caracas because the reality is so starkly different from the official narrative.

One narrative which the Western powers are desperate to have you believe is that Acting President Delcy Rodríguez betrayed Maduro and facilitated his capture. That is not what Maduro believes. It is not what his party believes, and I have been unable to find the slightest indication that anybody believes this in Venezuela.

The security services house journal, the Guardian, published about their fifth article making this claim, and flagged it as front-page lead and a major scoop. Yet all of the sources for the Guardian story are still the same US government sources, or Machado supporters from the wealthy Miami community of exiled capitalist parasites.

What is interesting is why the security services wish you to believe that Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, Speaker of the National Assembly, are agents for the USA. Opposition to US Imperialism has defined their entire lives since their father was tortured to death at the behest of the CIA when they were infants. They are both vocal in their continuing support for the Bolivarian Revolution and personally for Maduro.

The obvious American motive is to split and weaken the ruling party in Caracas and undermine the government of Venezuela. That was my reading. But it has also been suggested to me that Trump is pushing heavily the line that Rodríguez is pro-American in order both to claim victory, and to justify his lack of support for Machado. Rubio and many like him are keen to see Machado installed, but Trump’s assessment that she does not have the support to run the country seems from here entirely correct.

A variation on this that has also been suggested to me is that Trump wants to portray Rodríguez as pro-American to reassure American oil companies it is safe to invest (though exactly why he wants that is something of a mystery).

Meanwhile of course the USA seizes, steals and sells Venezuelan oil with no justification at all in international law. The proceeds are kept in Qatar under Trump’s personal control and are building up a huge slush fund he can use to bypass Congress. For those with long memories, it is like Iran/Contra on a massively inflated scale.

I am trying to get established in Venezuela to report to you and dive much deeper into the truth from Venezuela. I am afraid I am going to say it takes money. I am looking to hire a local cinematographer so we can start to produce videos. The first may be on what happened the night of the murderous US bombings and kidnap.

I did not want to crowdfund until I was sure it was viable to produce worthwhile content for you. The expenses of getting and living here, and building the required team, to produce good work do add up. I was very proud of the content we produced from Lebanon, but ultimately disappointed that we could not crowdfund sufficiently to sustain permanent independent reporting from there.

So we now have a Venezuela reporting crowdfunder. I have simply edited the Lebanese GoFundMe crowdfunder, because that took many weeks to be approved and I don’t want to go through all that again. So its starting baseline is the £35,000 we raised and spent in Lebanon.

I do very much appreciate that I have been simultaneously crowdfunding to fight the UK government in the Scottish courts over the proscription of Palestine Action. We fight forces that have unlimited funds. We can only succeed if we spread the load. 98% of those who read my articles never contribute financially. This would be a good moment to change that. It is just the simple baseline subscriptions to my blog that have got me to Venezuela, and that remains the foundation for all my work.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of subscription payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:

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MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
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Venezuela GoFundMe

To my great surprise, the video recording of yesterday’s Court of Session hearing on the judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action is still active on the court’s website, and you can watch it. I do not know how long this will last.

https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/livestream/court-of-session/case-p1017-25/#6dcfe87a-d9b7-49ba-9f01-ad69b8ad9c45

I have been used to the ludicrous restrictions on the English court hearings, where passwords were needed to access the video and it disappeared instantly after the livestream, despite these being public courts.

This in Edinburgh was a preliminary hearing on permission for a judicial review and the judge wished to consider only two questions:
Firstly, whether I had standing to bring the case.
Secondly, whether the Scottish court had jurisdiction in the light of the English judicial review.

I should be genuinely grateful for people’s opinions after watching the video, but my initial thoughts are these:

Firstly and most importantly, my legal team’s Note of Argument had asserted that they assumed that, as the judge only wished to have two points discussed, he was already satisfied on the most important point that this was a well-founded petition for judicial review with a genuine prospect of success.

The judge did not contradict this and the respondent (the UK government) did not contest this.

This is absolutely crucial. I am sure that the judicial review will proceed if the two points of standing and jurisdiction go our way.

Still more crucial, the UK government appeared almost to concede on standing, in the light of an affidavit from Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, to the effect that I was involved in Palestine Action almost from the start.

The judge told my KC, Joanna Cherry, that she did not need to address him on standing. This appears to a certainty to mean he does accept my standing.

On jurisdiction, the UK government did not claim that the Scottish courts do not have jurisdiction. They also did not claim that the Scottish courts may not hear a matter being heard concurrently in England.

They instead fell back on two arguments. The first was the timing, convenience and cost (sic) of a Scottish judicial review. The judge appeared to give this short shrift.

The second argument – and it was the UK government’s main point – was “comity”. This was defined as “good neighbourliness between jurisdictions”, “politeness”, “courtesy” and even as mutual respect between labourers in neighbouring vineyards (honestly). The need to avoid “contradictory judgments” within the UK was advanced. All these were quotes from English judgments.

Joanna Cherry KC punctured this with one phrase: “that rather assumes the English court will get it right”.

She also directly quoted in full my own assertion from my own affidavit:

22. I am a Scot. I live in Scotland. Scotland is where I wish to publish my views in support of Palestine Action. Scotland is where my established Article X and XI human rights are being infringed.

23. I wish to seek the protection of the courts in my own jurisdiction against executive infringement of my rights within this jurisdiction.

24. As I understand it, the Scottish courts are not subservient or junior to the courts of England and Wales. Their opinion is equally valid and – crucially – the courts of Scotland have the absolute right to take a different view, even in a very similar or identical matter, to the court of England and Wales.

25. The disproportionate effect of the proscription of Palestine Action on individuals in Scotland has been appalling. Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested on absurd pretence of “terrorism”.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/25520722000941647

There was a wonderful turnout of support on a cold, wet Monday morning at 9am. The court was packed. The judge promised to give a decision this week if possible, or very shortly thereafter.

As I said outside the courtroom, this was not about my standing or rights; it was about the abuse of the human rights to free speech and free assembly of everybody in Scotland. It was about those scores of decent people in Scotland being ludicrously treated as terrorists. It was about the lives of the hunger strikers. Above all it was about the right to act to stop genocide, and about the 100,000 or more Palestinians massacred by Israel.

The rigged judicial panel on the parallel case in England has still not delivered its ruling in their judicial review.

The jury is out on the Filton Six trial in Woolwich Crown Court, which includes the incident where a policewoman was unfortunately injured.

I have no doubt that what is happening is this: the Court of Appeal is awaiting that verdict and a massive media blitz of “Palestine Action Terrorists attacked policewoman with sledgehammer”.

After that it will quickly be announced that the proscription of Palestine Action has been upheld.

On the Filton trial, I do urge you to read the astounding defence speech of Rajiv Menon KC on behalf of Charlotte Head.

Here is a little bit of it:

So that’s what His Lordship said to you, and Ms Heer in her closing speech, on much the same theme, told you that the defendants who had given evidence had not raised any real challenge to the charge of criminal damage. I’m sorry, but it is not right to say that the defendants who gave evidence did not raise any challenge. They did raise a challenge. They maintained that they had a lawful excuse. That was their challenge. But what’s happened is that His Lordship has withdrawn that defence as a matter of law, and that’s the true position that we find ourselves in. Their challenge was lawful excuse and the court has withdrawn that as a lawful defence. So where does that leave you, the members of the jury?

You could be forgiven for thinking that His Lordship is in fact directing you, as a matter of law, to convict Charlotte, who I’ll focus on for now, of criminal damage. But you’d be wrong to think that. His Lordship is not directing you to convict. In fact, not only is he not directing you to convict, but he’s also absolutely forbidden from doing so as a matter of law. The law is crystal clear on this point. No judge in any criminal case is allowed to direct a jury to convict any defendant of any criminal charge, whatever the evidence might be. That is the law.

Please remember that fundamental principle at all times when you retire. Please don’t misinterpret anything in His Lordship’s directions or summing up (which will follow the defence speeches) as amounting to a legal direction to convict. That would be a terrible mistake to make. I repeat, His Lordship is absolutely not directing you to convict, because he’s barred as a matter of law from doing so.

The jury has every right to be confused about this because it is confusing. You have every right to think that the distinction between withdrawing the only available defence to a criminal charge on the facts, and a direction to convict, is at best a distinction without a difference. You have every right to think that the two effectively amount to the same thing. But the fact of the matter is they are absolutely not the same thing. They are fundamentally different. Let me try and explain it.

If you look at the legal directions and the first section, headed Functions Of Judge And Jury, you’ll see it’s quite lengthy. I’m not going to go through it point by point, but I’d ask you to read it carefully when you retire. All the directions in this document are important, but I’d suggest that the directions on the function of judge and jury are particularly important in this case. The key point to summarise is that the facts, and the verdicts you return having considered the facts, are solely for you.

So nobody, not even His Lordship, can direct you as to what factual conclusions to reach. Nobody, not even His Lordship, can direct you to convict. It’s as simple as that. That’s the law. So, for the avoidance of any doubt about this, I am absolutely not asking you to disregard His Lordship’s legal directions. On the contrary, I’m asking you to follow them, in particular this section on functions of judge and jury, and remind you that nobody, not even His Lordship, can dictate to you what factual conclusions to reach in this case, nor direct you to convict the defendants of any of the charges they face.

This is the one of the greatest legal speeches – including historical speeches – I have ever read. Its strength lies in its brazen defiance of the judge and brilliant footwork along the edge of contempt of court.

It is precisely what lawyers need to be doing to resist galloping authoritarianism and the complicity in it of the judiciary. I shall return to the question of what was withheld from the Woolwich jury about Elbit, just as soon as the verdict is in and I may do so without imprisonment.

I am afraid to say I still have to ask for donations. If we get a judicial review of the proscription in Scotland we are going to need to put in a huge fundraising effort for the actual review. If we lose the decision, I am liable to have the UK government’s costs awarded against me. Either way, this is about to get very expensive – which is of course precisely what the authorities rely on to crush opposition.

If we can spread the burden across enough small contributions, we can do it.

I am extremely grateful to approximately 670 people who have already contributed. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship.

You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/

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In the Western world today, fighting for freedom feels Quixotic, but I shall nevertheless wake early tomorrow to be at the Court of Session in Edinburgh by 9am to fight the proscription in Scotland of Palestine Action.

I remain extremely concerned for the lives of the Palestine Action hunger strikers. As I predicted, Starmer’s government sees their potential deaths as an opportunity to burnish their populist, right-wing and Zionist credentials.

Tomorrow morning’s hearing is limited by the judge to two points of UK government objection: that I have no standing to bring the case as I am not a member of Palestine Action, and that the Scottish courts should not hear an issue that is already being decided in the courts of England and Wales.

On standing, I give evidence by affidavit that there is no “Membership”. Palestine Action never had a membership structure. But I collaborated with and assisted the co-founders, Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, almost from the start of the organisation. I spoke together with them on public platforms to urge support for Palestine Action (while it was legal), participated in a Palestine Action protest at an Elbit factory and provided advice and support.

Huda Ammori has submitted an affidavit which concludes thus:

12. Not only was Craig Murray actively supporting Palestine Action online, sharing
actions, and raising awareness of Palestine Action’s aims and strategy, he also
had joined the mass action himself against Elbit Systems’ UAV Tactical Systems
factory.
13. I also consider him a close friend and a confidant, who I would regularly speak
to about the challenges myself and others personally faced due to state
repression of Palestine Action. For the above reasons, I believe it is clear that
Craig Murray was both involved and an active supporter of Palestine Action and
is therefore extremely well placed to legally challenge the proscription of
Palestine Action.

I believe it would be an extremely illiberal interpretation of standing to throw out the case on the grounds I have no standing.

There is a Kafkaesque twist to this court case that shows the outrageous effects of the proscription. I wished to demonstrate the chilling effect on journalism, and limiting effect on freedom of speech, by illustrating the things I should like to write now on Palestine Action that the proscription makes it illegal to write.

My lawyers strongly advised me not to do this as it would lead to arrest and terrorism charges. Evidence in court is not privileged speech.

So I cannot tell the court what it is that the attack on my freedom of speech prevents me from saying. I thus cannot illustrate the absurd disproportionality of the restriction.

That is an example of the extraordinary black hole, sucking in freedoms, down which this proscription of a non-violent group has led us.

To move on to the second part of the argument, this is what my affidavit says on the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts:

21. But if particular status is needed I have it. I have participated in Palestine Action protests and have demonstrably supported them. I am a colleague and collaborator of Palestine Action’s founders. I am a journalist whose freedom of expression is being curtailed disproportionately. I have a demonstrable long-term particular interest in Palestine and in Article X and XI freedoms.

22. I am a Scot. I live in Scotland. Scotland is where I wish to publish my views in support of Palestine Action. Scotland is where my established Article X and XI human rights are being infringed.

23. I wish to seek the protection of the courts in my own jurisdiction against executive infringement of my rights within this jurisdiction.

24. As I understand it, the Scottish courts are not subservient or junior to the courts of England and Wales. Their opinion is equally valid and – crucially – the courts of Scotland have the absolute right to take a different view, even in a very similar or identical matter, to the court of England and Wales.

25. The disproportionate effect of the proscription of Palestine Action on individuals in Scotland has been appalling. Scores of peaceful people of entirely good character have been arrested on absurd pretence of “terrorism”.

26. Terrorism related charges are life changing. They do not only bring potential imprisonment. They bring loss of employment, debanking and loss of access to money, and severe international travel restriction….

40. In the Scottish legal tradition sovereignty rests with the people, not with the Crown in parliament.

41. In the English legal and constitutional tradition, parliament may do anything, be it ever so authoritarian. Parliament could legislate to repeal the Human Rights Act or cancel elections, and English courts would likely uphold that if properly passed through parliament and approved by the Crown.

42. I believe that the Scottish tradition of legal thought and practice should and does provide greater protection for the people from arbitrary and oppressive government, as expressed in the still in force Claim of Right. That is why I believe it is important for a Scottish court to hear this judicial review in Scotland for the protection of the people of Scotland from what I see as an arbitrary, oppressive, politically motivated and intellectually absurd executive action

We have been allocated Court No 1 in the Court of Session. This has a large public gallery, and I hope those able to do so will turn up for the hearing. It starts at 9.30am on Monday morning and we are asking people to rally outside from 9am. I realise that 9am on a Monday morning in a stormy Edinburgh January is not an attractive prospect, but I do believe it is important to show the judge that people really do care about these issues.

If we win, then there will be a full judicial review looking at the wider questions of genocide prevention and the right to take direct action, and the disproportionate effect of the proscription on freedom of speech and assembly.

For those who cannot be here in person the hearing will be livestreamed from 9.30am on Monday morning.

I am sorry to say this but we do need to still ask for donations to continue this forward. It is a very expensive thing to do. One thing the government relies on is that it has unlimited resources and we do not. If we can spread the burden across enough small contributions, we can do it.

I am extremely grateful to approximately 670 people who have already contributed. Every penny helps, but please do not cause yourself hardship.

You can donate through the link via Crowd Justice, which goes straight to the lawyers, or through this blog.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/scottish-challenge-to-proscription/

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The mainstream media covered Venezuela non-stop yesterday. They many times mentioned Delcy Rodríguez, Vice President, because Trump stated she is now in charge. They never mentioned that 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the torture to death of her father, socialist activist Jorge Rodríguez, by the CIA-backed security services of the US-aligned Pérez regime in Venezuela.

That would of course spoil the evil communists versus nice democrats narrative that is being forced down everybody’s throats.

Nor did they mention that the elected governments of Hugo Chávez reduced extreme poverty by over 70%, reduced poverty by 50%, halved unemployment, quadrupled the number receiving a state pension and achieved 100% literacy. Chávez took Venezuela from the most unequal society for wealth distribution in Latin America to the most equal.

Nor have they mentioned that María Corina Machado is from one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families, which dominated the electricity and steel industries before nationalisation, and that her backers are the very families that were behind those CIA-controlled murderous regimes.

Economic sanctions imposed by the West – and another thing they have not mentioned is that the UK has confiscated over £2 billion of the Venezuelan government’s assets – have made it difficult for the Maduro government to do much more than shore up the gains of the Chávez years.

But that Venezuela is a major production or trafficking point for narcotics entering the USA is simply a nonsense. Nicolás Maduro has his faults, but he is not a drug trafficking kingpin. The claim is utter garbage.

The willingness of the West to accept the opposition’s dodgy vote tallies from the 2024 Presidential elections does not legitimise invasion and kidnap.

Yesterday almost every Western government came up with a statement that managed to endorse Trump’s bombing and kidnap – plainly grossly illegal in international law – and simultaneously claim to support international law. The hypocrisy is truly off the scale. It is also precisely the Western powers that support the genocide in Gaza that support the attack on Venezuela.

The genocide in Gaza demonstrated the end of hopes – which were extremely important to my own worldview – for the rule of international law to outweigh the brutal use of force in international relations. The kidnap of Maduro, the rush of Western powers to accept it, and the inability of the rest of the world to do anything about it, have underlined that international law is simply dead.

In the long list of appalling awards of the Nobel peace prize, none can be worse than the latest to the Venezuelan traitor María Corina Machado, intended actively to promote and bring forward the imperialist attack on Venezuela by the United States.

It takes a great deal of effort to come up with a worse decision than to award Kissinger immediately after the massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia. It was a dreadful award, but it was intended to recognise the putative Paris peace deal and prod the United States towards honouring the peace process. Initially it was a joint award with Vietnamese negotiator Lê Đức Thọ (who sensibly declined).

The Kissinger award was a terrible mistake, but the Committee were seeking to end a war, starting from a willingness to cooperate with unprincipled realpolitik. In the award to Machado, they are deliberately seeking to endorse and promote the start of a war. That is a very different thing.

Similarly the award to Obama was a crazed moment of hope after the despair of the invasion of Iraq. It was a combined mistaken belief that Obama would be better, with a mistaken idea it would encourage him to be so.

I accept that the line I am drawing is a thin one; rewarding the perpetrators of Western aggression is only a short step away from actually encouraging Western aggression. But nevertheless a line has been crossed.

The gross hypocrisy of the morally bankrupt Committee chairman, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, in claiming that the prize is for non-violent action on Venezuela, at the very moment that Trump gathered the largest invasion force since Iraq off Venezuela makes me feel thoughts towards Frydnes that ought not qualify me for any peace prize at all. I feel similarly towards Guterres and all those others abandoning their supposed international role to lick Trump’s boot today.

So what now for Venezuela? Well, on the most optimistic reading Trump’s action was performative. He had to do something to avoid the Grand Old Duke of York jibes after that immense concentration of forces off Venezuela, and he has produced a spectacular that actually changes little.

On this reading, the Americans may be making the same mistake they made in Iran, in believing that decapitation strategy and bombing will spark internal revolution. In Iran, they actually strengthened support for the Government.

As of yesterday afternoon, the Bolivarian government in Caracas genuinely did not yet know what had happened, how far there was collusion in the armed forces in Maduro’s kidnap, and whether they still had the control of the army.

Trump’s plain signal that the US views Rodríguez as in charge, and Trump’s contemptuous dismissal of Machado – the only bright point in an appalling day – might give pause to any in Venezuela expecting active US support for a coup.

To those who claim Maduro was a tyrant, I refer you to the comic opera Guaidó coup of 30 April 2019. Guaidó had been declared President of Venezuela by the western powers despite never even having been a candidate. He attempted a coup and wandered around Caracas with heavily armed henchmen, declaring himself President but just being laughed at by the army, police and population.

In any country in the world Guaidó would have been jailed for life for attempting an armed coup, and I expect in the majority he would have been executed. Maduro just patted him on the head and put him back on a plane.

So much for the evil dictatorship.

By pure chance, on Friday I had texted Delcy Rodríguez about arrangements for travel and accreditation so I could go and report from Venezuela and bring you more of the truth from that country that the media is hiding from you. I made plain I was not asking for financial support. Things are obviously fluid at the moment, but it is still my intention to get there.

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