A vast cloying morass of injustice has visibly submerged the British legal systems in anything connected to Palestine.

In a quite incredible series of linked and kinked events this week, the senior KC representing one of the Palestine Action activists in the Filton trial was in the Court of Appeal arguing against being found in contempt of court for his summing up in that case – a speech which I described at the time as the greatest legal speech I had ever read.

He fell foul of the quite incredible conditions imposed on the defence in that trial – they must not refer to the motive of their clients for action against Elbit, they must not refer to Elbit’s role in the Israeli defence industry, they must not refer to genocide or to ethnic cleansing in relation to Gaza.

Compare this to the public statements of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and of then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper where they claimed that one of the defendants had attacked a policewoman with a sledgehammer – a blatant attempt to influence the jury in the Filton trial.

What is very plain in the Filton case, as in the Alex Salmond case, is that contempt of court rules are only applied to the defence and not to the prosecution.

Juries had been shown by the prosecution the notebooks of the defendants, with all information about Elbit and their operations removed.

The barristers were also forbidden from telling the jury that they have the right to acquit according to their conscience, irrespective of the direction of the judge.

The first Filton trial famously failed to return any guilty verdicts at all, and all defendants were found not guilty of aggravated burglary, with no verdict returned on more minor charges.

This was extremely important as the aggravated burglary charge carries the meaning of a deliberate purpose to cause harm to persons, not just to property (the phrase “aggravated burglary” does not obviously carry the connotation of intent to harm persons to the layman, but that is the purport in English law).

The acquittals on aggravated burglary were particularly annoying to the Starmer regime because this accusation about intent to harm people was a key part of Yvette Cooper’s entirely dishonest argument for proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

The Filton verdicts were a major setback for the government, and the unfortunate KC was dragged in by the judge for the unforgivable offence of securing the acquittal of his client in a situation which was extremely embarrassing to Starmer and Cooper.

The subsequent contempt case could lead to both the KC being disbarred and to his imprisonment. To add to the incredibly sinister story, this case is entirely secret. It is illegal to mention the contempt case at all – and could lead to imprisonment for contempt of anyone who mentions it.

Yet that is only the first layer of the heaving mass of injustice around this case.

The government has attempted to make it illegal to inform voters of their established right to acquit according to their conscience.

In 2023 Trudi Warner was arrested standing outside a Crown Court in a climate activist trial, for holding a sign which said “Jurors. You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience”. This legal principle is on a marble plaque in the Old Bailey.

The High Court dismissed the case against Warner, stating that she was informing the jury of an established legal principle. In 2024 the government dropped its appeal against the High Court ruling in Warner’s favour.

Yet astonishingly, the Metropolitan Police have again arrested Trudi Warner, for standing outside the Filton Trial holding the exact same sign. They arrested others holding the same wording as well.

The Metropolitan Police claim different grounds for arrest this time: under section 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act they banned the small protest by Trudy and a handful of others. That the protest threatened serious disruption or intimidation – the bar under the Public Order Act – is plainly a nonsense.

The increasingly fascist Metropolitan Police are simply seeking to find a way to get round the High Court judgment and prevent the jury being informed of their right to acquit.

In Judge Johnson the government have an entirely complicit judge in limiting what the jury may hear, and in the Metropolitan Police they have an entirely compliant tool in keeping knowledge of their rights from the jury.

Now we have to delve still another layer deeper into the stench of corruption around this case. The government decided to go for a retrial of the Filton case on the more minor charges on which the jury had been unable to reach a verdict, having returned not guilty on the major ones.

The limitations of what the barristers could say in their defence speeches were so extreme, that five of the six defendants in the Filton Trial decided to dismiss their barristers before the end of their case and make their closing speeches themselves.

Yes, you read that right. The barristers were forbidden from making the defence case, so the defendants had to speak for themselves.

To be plain, the defendants equally face the risk of possible imprisonment for contempt of court for breaching Judge Johnson’s orders in what they said to the jury, but unlike the barristers they do not of course face professional disbarment.

And what great speeches they all made. The Real Media website has done a fantastic job in documenting the trial, and I highly recommend you to read the closing speeches in full. But just this little segment from Charlotte Head’s closing speech in the Filton trial casts some light on what a monumental attempted stitch-up the egregious Judge Johnson has presided over:

The first thing that you might have noticed about the prosecution case is that they didn’t call a single security guard to give evidence. The prosecutor asked you to see things from Volante’s perspective [described in evidence as the most violent of the Elbit security guards], and you could have. She chose not to call him or any security guard to actually give evidence, because they know that they were the ones intimidating us. And if that wasn’t true, they would have called them to the stand.

The truth is that the security guards, like Elbit itself, have been shielded and sheltered by the state.

If this was a shop that we’d broken into, which I would never do by the way, then you’d expect the owner to come to court. You’d expect him to list all of the items that were damaged, and describe the impact it’s had on his business. But where is Elbit? You’ve heard a very detailed and very boring inventory of the tools we brought to dismantle the weapons. You even have – behind Tab 10 – pictures with information like the brand and the weight and the material of every single tool. So where is that information about the weapons that we dismantled? If this case is supposedly only about damage, then where is the inventory?

And I think that brings me to the CCTV. Everything that we’ve heard about the CCTV system came second-hand from PC Sarah Grant. Once again, the prosecution did not want to put an Elbit Systems employee in front of you to answer for themselves. They know that the explanation of why there is missing footage doesn’t make sense. The low frame rate cannot explain the missing footage. You’ve seen it. We spent way longer than a minute in that alcove. No matter how low the frame rate was, it’s impossible that nobody was pictured on that camera, where Volante was being incredibly violent. Coincidentally, we don’t have any body-worn footage from the alcove either. We also don’t have CCTV of the area where Luke [another Elbit guard] had Lottie screaming on the floor, or body-worn. Or when Mr. Volante hit Jordan in the neck with a sledgehammer – you only saw that because it’s captured on police body-worn.

PC Phoebe Webber accepted that there were CCTV cameras that covered all of these areas, and we know that security all had body-worn cameras. Sarah Grant accepted that someone would have to set the frame rates, but of course, Witness Alpha [described as a senior Elbit employee whose identity has been withheld from defence lawyers] , who hasn’t been here at all, couldn’t remember the password to access the settings. Could anyone really believe that a multi-million pound weapons and technology company that specializes in surveillance drones didn’t have a CCTV system that worked?

Not only were Elbit shielded from anything at all being said about their supply of weapons to Israel, not only was it forbidden to mention genocide and ethnic cleansing, but some key Elbit witnesses – I presume from Mossad or the IDF – were granted anonymity.

I previously reported that the police left the recordings of the video evidence, in their police evidence bags, in the custody of Elbit for over a year. Throughout this prosecution the Metropolitan Police, Elbit, the Crown Prosecution Service and the judge have been a part of a seamless zionist security operation.

This is from the closing speech of Zoe Rogers:

After hearing the 6 of us give evidence you might think it odd that what’s happening in Palestine has gone completely unmentioned, you might have noticed certain words that have been blacklisted, that until our closing speeches the word genocide wasn’t said once. There have been interruptions from the prosecution, quick subject changes from our barristers – it’s almost as if whole topics of conversation have been banned. The prosecution know full well that we are right that this factory is supplying weapons to Israel to be used in Gaza. That is why they are choosing to suppress it rather than contest it. The prosecution have decided that the legality of Israel’s actions is irrelevant in this trial. Because they know you could not in good conscience find us guilty of anything if you were allowed to hear the whole truth.

…Now I’m an ordinary person, with friends, family, a place at university, a cat I love, basically a whole lot to lose by going to prison. But you know that we all actually intended to be arrested on the 6th of August. We intended to go to trial. And I won’t speak for the others here, but the reason I was willing and confident enough to allow that, was because I knew that now, 20 months in the future, I would be standing in front of 12 ordinary people like you. Not politicians, not legal experts, not barristers and judges wearing 400 yr old horsehair on their heads, but a panel of my equals. You are the best counterweight to power and tyranny within the legal system as it exists today. It is a privilege to be judged by you. And I don’t say that to flatter you, but because as you’ve already heard, the right to trial by jury is under threat, with a Bill passing through the House of Commons as I speak. Juries as we know them today may not be around for much longer, precisely because your pockets cannot be weighed down by bribes from the rich and powerful. (And also because juries often refuse to convict in these kinds of cases). And that is a very powerful position for you to be in.

No one can tell you to convict in this case, not even the judge. In fact, the judge is explicitly not allowed to tell you to convict! You, and only you, can decide on your verdicts. But not only can you acquit us, but you have the RIGHT to acquit us. No one can punish you for your decision. No one can even ask you why.

On Tuesday the jury will start its third day of deliberation. Once the verdicts are in, it is going to be fascinating to see if Johnson attempts to find any of the defendants in contempt of court for their closing speeches. They went further than the barrister who has already been attacked in this way.

Let us now leave Woolwich Crown Court (a physical adjunct of Belmarsh prison) and head to the Royal Courts of Justice, where the Starmer regime held this week its appeal against the High Court finding that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful.

I have always suspected that the British deep state will ensure the proscription is upheld at the end of a charade of a legal procedure. I was not diminished in that belief by this article by Joshua Rozenberg, partner of lunatic uber-zionist Melanie Phillips, in which he argues that the extremely unusual forming of a five-judge court of appeal, including England and Wales’s two most senior judges, is to bolster the court with sufficient seniority convincingly to overturn Dame Victoria Sharp and her three-judge panel.

The hearing did not on the surface go terribly well for the Starmer regime. Their primary argument was that the proscription had been democratically approved by parliament and the courts had no right to interfere.

In terms of judicial consideration, the assertion that, in effect, the European Convention on Human Rights does not apply if parliament approves an Order which contravenes it, is problematic (though the English courts would probably uphold it in primary legislation).

In the real world, of course, the sham of democracy ignores the fact that Cooper, Starmer, Lammy and the lot of them are bought and paid for by the zionist lobby.

Huda Ammori’s (co-founder of Palestine Action) legal team made the obvious points of the effect of the proscription on human rights and freedom of expression. This was bolstered by a letter of 1500 signatories openly defying the law and declaring support for Palestine Action and opposition to genocide.

Ammori’s team were able to make rather more of a couple of points that had, in my view, been given insufficient prominence at earlier hearings.

The first is the argument that the measure has a disproportionately severe effect on the Palestinian community in the UK, who feel suppressed in protesting against the devastating attacks on their own people and risk false classification as terrorist.

It is worth noting that Israeli interests were extensively consulted before the ban was imposed, but not one single Palestinian was consulted.

The second is a more pointed emphasis on the astonishing argument by the Metropolitan Police and the Joint Terrorism Assessment Centre in the papers recommending proscription, that designation as terrorism is necessary because Palestine Action keep appointing good defence lawyers and achieving acquittals.

This acknowledgement that the proscription is an attempt to undermine the criminal justice system should be key to the case. It is not a point that to date the judges have been willing to tackle – no judicial decision has acknowledged it so far.

The Starmer regime is intent on the entire subversion of the supposed protections of British justice. It is operating purely in the interests of a foreign state, in order to protect Israel from any potential consequences of the public revulsion against its genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians.

To complete this circle of crazed authoritarianism, after the open hearings on the government appeal over the proscription of Palestine Action concluded, there was a day of “closed hearing” where secret evidence is heard. Huda Ammori will never be told what was alleged in these hearings and never have a chance to answer.

I am the “petitioner” in the parallel judicial review in Scotland. That case should have concluded by now, except the Starmer regime has been introducing “secret evidence” in closed session. I do not even know when such sessions are happening, let alone what is said in them.

My “interests” are “represented” by regime-approved lawyers who are forbidden from any communication with me. We can guess at the lies that are being told in these closed sessions – such guesses might range from Iranian funding to bomb manufacture – but we cannot even testify they are lies.

The Starmer regime has now, for the third time, introduced a motion to “sist” the Scottish judicial review until after the English case has concluded, on the basis that it is undesirable for Scottish and English courts to reach differing conclusions.

This is the third time they have attempted to sist the case, so far without success.

We have applied for interim relief – that the proscription should be suspended in Scotland pending the judicial review, because it is so delayed, in order to avoid people being convicted of terrorism on the basis of an Order subsequently found unlawful.

The Starmer regime is making the process as long and drawn out as possible, partly to postpone a potential politically damaging defeat, but mostly as a matter of lawfare. Each hearing drains our financial resources. I am afraid this tactic against us does have the potential to succeed.

Unless we can widen our donor base we are not going to get this case over the line. That would be a great shame, because it is crucial not only for freedom of expression, not only as a stand against the genocide in Palestine, but as an assertion of the independent rights of Scotland and its legal system.

If you can help fund the case please do so. But if you know anybody else who has the means to make a contribution, and who supports the principles for which we are fighting, please speak to them and see if they can help. I am extremely grateful to the thousands who have contributed so far.

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