Six deny terror charges over alleged plan to defeat Palestine Action ban

Six people who appeared in court to deny terror offences are alleged to have tried to organise mass gatherings with the aim of rendering the ban on the group Palestine Action unenforceable.

The charges related to plans for meetings in London, Cardiff and Manchester which were allegedly organised over Zoom meetings in July, August and this month.

Former government lawyer Timothy Crosland, 55, from Southwark, south London, appeared in the glass dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, along with gardener Dawn Manners, 61, from Hackney, east London and David Nixon, 39, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

In a separate hearing on Thursday afternoon, student Patrick Friend, 26, of Grange, Edinburgh, appeared in court along with Gwen Harrison, 48, from Kendal, Cumbria, and Melanie Griffith, 62, from Southwark.

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 a group called Defend Our Juries (DOJ), 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, despite opposition by the prosecution.

They will next appear at the Old Bailey on September 26.

After the hearing, a DOJ 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.”

DOJ claimed 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.”