While the Court of Appeal has now stopped the High Court contempt of court action against Rajiv Menon KC for defending his client, this is purely on procedural grounds. They ruled that Judge Johnson had to go via the Attorney General to the HIgh Court, not direct. It is now referred back to Johnson who can use the Attorney General route.

Given that Johnson is a vicious authoritarian, a former lawyer for the security services who did everything possible to rig the Filton trial against the defendants, and that the Attorney General “Lord” Helmer is a vicious pro-genocidal zionist who was Israel’s go-to lawyer on war crimes charges in the UK, this contempt of court action may well not be over.

In addition to barring the use of the terms genocide or ethnic cleansing at trial, barring the defence of necessity to stop war crimes, barring the defendants from explaining the motive of their actions, and barring the jury from being informed of their absolute legal right to acquit, Judge Johnson also barred the jury from being told that he intended to add the terrorism aggravation on sentencing.

This is incredibly important. The norm is in England that you serve 40% of a jail sentence in prison and 60% on parole. If the terrorism aggravation is applied, you serve 100% in jail. So it is the difference between two years in prison and five years in prison. This was hidden from the jury.

A terrorism aggravation will also lead to debanking, severe travel restrictions and very probably loss of career.

The Filton action against the Elbit weapons factory preceded the proscription of Palestine Action, but a judge can add a terrorism aggravation to any offence. (You may recall that in Scotland a young woman is facing charges of “dangerous driving aggravated by terrorism” for an action againt the Leonardo weapons factory).

Violence against property can be construed as terrorism in the UK if the objective is to influence government. Extraordinarily, Judge Johnson has indicated that he believes that the actions against the Israeli weapons factories may be intended to influence the policy of the government of Israel. He will announce his final decision at sentencing but he has already told the court (but not the jury) that is his thinking.

The activists have already spent 16 months in jail on remand. In any precendent for a first time criminal damage conviction, inlcuding the sentences of Palestine Action and climate activists, they would be extremely unlikely to be given sentences of more than three years in jail. With the standard 40% tariff, that means they would not have further prison time but some remaining time on parole.

Therefore Judge Johnson’s decision to keep them in prison pending sentencing next month appears to indicate he is intending to impose abnormally long sentences and the terrorist aggravation.

Two of the six defendants were completely acquitted. Three were acquitted on all counts, except the most minor one of criminal damage. But for this Johnson can sentence them to ten years in prison, and use the terrorism aggravation to remove the possibility of parole.

This is astonishing for two reasons:

Firstly, the notion that those damaging Israeli weapons did so in the hope of changing Netanyahu’s mind about destroying Gaza – as opposed to destroying some of his weapons supply – is plainly nonsensical.

The second is that if they were trying to change Netanyahu’s mind, they were trying to influence him against committing Genocide.

Which only a hardwired zionist nutter like Judge Johnson can consider a bad thing.

The legal fight against the proscription of Palestine Action continues. We are back in court on 27 May in Edinburgh with a motion to suspend the proscription in Scotland. We urgently need funds to take on the power and unlimited resources of the state.

I am afraid these proceedings are horribly expensive to keep the legal battle going. Again please contribute if you can but do not contribute if it causes you difficulty. If you know people who are able to afford to help and likely to be sympathetic, please do contact them and ask their assistance. We are trying to keep a lot of very good people out of prison.

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/

---

---