Six activists charged with terror offences have pleaded not guilty pleas over allegations they tried to organise mass gatherings to counter the government’s ban on Palestine Action.
Former government lawyer Timothy Crosland, 55, gardener Dawn Manners, 61, David Nixon, 39, student Patrick Friend, 26, Gwen Harrison, 48, and Melanie Griffith, 62, appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Thursday.
They are all accused of arranging, managing, or addressing Zoom meetings on a series of dates in July, August, and September.
Criminal charges were announced last night, following a Metropolitan Police investigation into the activities of protest group Defend Our Juries.
The case stems from the government’s decision in June to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.
The ban introduced the threat of criminal charges for anyone seen supporting the organisation.
After proscription, a series of large demonstrations have taken place, involving mass arrests of participants holding banners, wearing t-shirts, and displaying badges which support Palestine Action.
The six defendants are charged over alleged plans for meetings in London, Cardiff and Manchester.
It is said meetings were organised over Zoom, the court heard.
Crosland, from Southwark, south London, appeared alongside Manners, from Hackney, east London and Nixon, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire at a hearing on Thursday morning.
Their three co-defendants Friend, of Grange, Edinburgh, Harrison, from Kendal, Cumbria, and Griffith, from Southwark, appeared together in court in the afternoon.
They each are accused of breaches of the Terrorism Act after allegedly arranging, managing or addressing meetings, knowing that the purpose was to support a proscribed organisation.
The defendants are alleged to be members of Defend Our Juries, or to work closely with it, which opposes the ban on Palestine Action.
Emma Haraway, prosecuting, said the charges related to defendants using Zoom meetings to encourage people to attend mass gatherings in support of Palestine Action, which has been listed as a proscribed organisation, and thus overwhelm the police.
The defendants denied all the charges that they face and were granted conditional bail by District Judge John Zani.
They will next appear at the Old Bailey on September 26.
After the hearing, a Defend Our Juries spokesperson said that 42 terror charges for “hosting public Zoom calls is nothing short of a scandal”.
They added: “Imposing tagged curfews and restricting access to devices simply for providing a legal briefing to non-violent protesters on holding a seven-word cardboard sign outside Parliament is a gross abuse of power.
“These are the tactics deployed by dictatorships — not a democracy.”
The group claims the arrests were a tactic aimed at derailing mass action planned for Saturday but that they will have the opposite effect.
They said: “The mass defiance of the ban cannot be stopped and is growing all the time.
“It will only stop when the UK Government abandons this grossly unjust proscription and ends its complicity in Israel’s horrific atrocities.”
Crosland said the defendants were being treated as terrorists for “peacefully holding cardboard signs in Parliament Square”.
He added: “All they’re doing is confirming the power that lies in our hands when we take quiet and determined action together, resisting genocide and defending our democratic freedoms by opposing this crazy ban.”
