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The Palestine Action protest group will be designated as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom after losing a challenge of the Superior Court to temporarily block the Ministry of Interior of the Prohibition.
After the ruling on Friday afternoon, the prohibition will enter into force at midnight, which makes it a criminal offense, punishable with up to 14 years in prison, to belong or support the pro-palestine organization.
The London Court rejected a request from the co -founder of the Huda Ammori group, who had asked to stop the proscription until he could submit the full legal case at a hearing at the end of this month that prohibiting the action of Palestine would be illegal.
Judge Martin Chamberlain said: “The damage that will occur if interim relief will be rejected, but the claim is then successful, it is insufficient to overcome the strong public interest in maintaining order in force.”
Ben Watson KC, a lawyer who represents the Ministry of Interior, said that a temporary block for proscription would be a “serious disfiguration of the legal regime.”
Parliament voted to ban Palestine’s action this week, after an incident in which its members broke into Brize Norton, the largest air base in the country and damaged military planes with red spray paint and lever.
The incident, which involved two people who entered the base of the Royal Air Force in Oxfordshire in electric scooters and left without being detected, led the Ministry of Defense to launch a security review in the military bases of the United Kingdom.
The legal team that represents Ammori argued that the damage to the property alone did not comply with the threshold of terrorism, and that the designation could have indiscriminate consequences for thousands of supporters of the group that did not participate in direct action.
Raza Husain Kc, Ammori’s lawyer, described the “a evil considered, discriminatory … abuse of legal power” that looked like the tactics of authoritarian governments that tried to quell public dissent.
“The evidence shows that this is a moment ‘i am Spartacus’. This is a movement of civil disobedience, and will continue,” he added.
Palestine Action said he was looking for an “urgent attraction to prevent (a) ‘dystopian nightmare’ that criminalizes thousands of people during the night.”
The crowds gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday, triggered flares and sing pro-palestinian slogans. Some protesters reported clashes with police officers on social networks.
The parliamentarians had approved the proscription by a wide margin on Wednesday. On Thursday a heated debate was carried out in the House of Lords, even when the companions also approved the ban. Lord Peter Hain, a former cabinet minister under Tony Blair’s labor government, said: “If you start labeling people as terrorists, not just in all areas, follow a very dangerous route.”
“There are many other criminal crimes that such an activity could attract instead of treating young people as terrorists because they feel frustrated by the inability to stop the mass murders and the bombings of the Palestinians in Gaza,” he added.
Palestine Action, founded in 2020, has attacked defense companies linked to Israelis operating in the United Kingdom. Four activists, between 22 and 35 years old, were accused Thursday by the Anti -Terrorist Police in relation to the theft of Brize Norton.
