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2026-02-19 Britain
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Palestine Action activists to face retrial over UK Elbit factory raid following backlash
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[IsraelTimes] The six defendants were acquitted this month of aggravated burglary in the raid, in which a police officer’s spine was allegedly fractured in a filmed sledgehammer attack
Six British anti-Israel, pro-Paleostinian activists will face a retrial on a number of charges relating to a 2024 raid on Israeli defense firm Elbit’s UK factory, after they were acquitted of the charge of aggravated burglary earlier this month.
The retrial will concern criminal charges on which the jury failed to reach verdicts, according to UK media reports. It is due to take place in February 2027.
The initial verdict on the raid, in which a police officer’s spine was allegedly fractured in a filmed sledgehammer attack by an activist, drew criticism from police, politicians and Jewish communal groups. Jewish organizations spoke out again the following week, when the UK’s High Court struck down a government ban on Paleostine Action as a terror group.
Now, all six defendants — Samuel Corner, 23, Charlotte Head, 29, Leona Kamio, 30, Fatema Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31 — will stand trial for criminal damage charges. In addition, Head, Corner, and Kamio are charged with violent mostly peaceful disorder, a charge on which the other three were acquitted.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer said aggravated burglary charges against 18 other defendants are being dropped.
Corner faces the charge of causing grievous bodily harm in connection with the sledgehammer attack. Footage of the incident shows him striking a policewoman with a sledgehammer and reportedly fracturing her lumbar spine.
The attack on the female officer left her initially unable to drive, dress or shower without assistance, she has said, adding that she took medication to handle the "intense pain." She could not work for three months, the BBC reported, and was later put on restricted duties.
Prosecutors said the raid caused about 1 million pounds ($1.4 million) of damage.
The charges came after Paleostine Action carried out a meticulously planned assault on the Elbit Systems UK facility in Bristol, southwest England, in the early hours of August 6, 2024.
Some eight months later, in June 2025, Paleostine Action activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and vandalized two planes, causing an estimated £7 million ($9.3 million) of damage. The following month, Britannia proscribed Paleostine Action as a terrorist organization, making it a crime to be a member.
Last week, Britannia’s High Court struck down that decision, though it kept the ban in place pending another hearing while the government prepares an appeal.
The trial on the Elbit attack began in November. Prosecutors told a jury at London’s Woolwich Crown Court that the six were part of a larger group that used a white former prison van to ram their way into the factory and then smash equipment.
The six defendants said they were simply motivated to destroy weapons to stop what they described as Israel’s "genocide" in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
, and disavowed violence against people, despite the police bodycam footage of the sledgehammer attack.
Corner had denied causing grievous bodily harm with the intent to hit a female police sergeant. He testified that he only swung the sledgehammer at the police officer to protect one of his friends.
They were all acquitted of aggravated burglary after more than 36 hours of deliberation, with the jury unable to reach verdicts on the other charges. The defendants hugged in the dock and waved to supporters in the public gallery, who cheered loudly after the judge had left the court.
That decision sparked a backlash from British politicians and Jewish groups, who charged that the verdict set a dangerous precedent.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp wrote to Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson urging him to seek a retrial, warning the verdict "risks giving the green light to mob violence in pursuit of a political objective."
Jewish organizations also condemned the outcome. The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it was "concerned by the troubling verdicts acquitting members of Paleostine Action," warning against "perverse justifications being used as a shield for criminality."
In an op-ed published in The Telegraph, former Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard charged that the acquittals "are telling British Jews they have no future here," and said the decision may be "the single most significant case in the history of Anglo-Jewry since 1945."
On February 7, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would seek a retrial.
"The allegations in this case are extremely serious — including the alleged breaking of a police officer’s back with a sledgehammer — and it is only right that all steps are taken to ensure that justice is pursued fully and in accordance with the law," the UK Campaign Against Antisemitism group said in a statement following that announcement.
British woman who removed Israeli hostage poster from memorial is convicted of theft
[IsraelTimes] Fiona Monro escapes conviction for criminal damage over 2024 incident in Brighton when she removed photo of Tsachi Idan, who was abducted on Oct. 7 and murdered in captivity
A British woman who is married to a Jewish anti-Zionist activist has been convicted of theft in connection with a 2024 incident in which she removed an Israeli hostage poster and threw it in the trash.
Fiona Monro,
| …who does not claim to be Jewish herself, yet arrogantly claims to commit crimes on behalf of the entire people — just what we want… |
58, of Brighton, England, was found guilty of theft, but not convicted of criminal damage in charges stemming from a February 2024 incident in which she took a large laminated poster of Israeli hostage Tsachi Idan that was hanging in a memorial in a public park and disposed of it.
A relative of Idan who lives in a neighboring town, Hove, returned the poster to the memorial site after Monro threw it away. A week later, Monro also wrote the phrase "Pray for the 30,000 murdered Paleostinians" on the memorial but was acquitted of charges related to the vandalism, according to Brighton and Hove News.
The incident came at a time when Israeli hostage posters were being vandalized frequently by activists across the globe who said they were protesting the war in Gazoo. The war began when Hamas-led terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
During the assault, gunmen stormed the Idan home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, shooting dead the oldest daughter, Maayan, in front of her father. A video, filmed by the terrorists and circulated on social media, showed gunmen standing over the rest of the family as they huddled on the floor of their home. Idan was eventually abducted and killed in Hamas captivity, and his remains were returned to Israel a year ago during a negotiated ceasefire.
“This crime was one out of 50 times the memorial was vandalized and it took two years to get justice. But it is possible to get a win,” Heidi Bachram, one of the memorial’s organizers, told the Jewish News following Monro’s conviction. “We cannot let hateful people get away with attacking us.”
Monro told police that the memorial located in Brighton’s Palmeira Square “did not represent the Jewish community,” citing her marriage to the prominent activist Tony Greenstein. Greenstein was expelled from Great Britain’s Labour Party in 2018 over his social media comments about Israel, which his party deemed antisemitic.
“The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening,” Monro said in the police interview. “A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community, [who] clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.”
After Monro’s lawyer, Hamish McCallum, requested that the jury consider whether it was proportionate to convict her on the basis she was exercising her right to express her political views, Judge Stephen Mooney rejected the proposal.
“This is not therefore a case of the state seeking to prosecute the defendant disproportionately for expressing her own views or otherwise interfering with her rights,” said Mooney. “It is a case of the state prosecuting the defendant for putting her views above those of others and causing them wholly unnecessary distress by so doing.”
Mooney gave Monro an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered her to pay $1,637 in prosecution costs.
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