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Palestine Action activists to be sentenced as terrorists without jury’s knowledge (www.middleeasteye.net)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.

After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.

Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.

Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.

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[–] 72 points 4 months ago (18 children)

I realize this is the UK, where their judicial system is still rooted in the authority of the crown, and not the people, but in any civilized country, putting one charge to trial and sentencing them for another is not justice.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    You're right about the substance, but are you saying that most of the EU, Canada, Australia, New zealand are not civilized?

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (10 children)

    I'm not aware of that happening in any of those places, but if the shoe fits.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago* (9 children)

    No it's not, but all those places are monarchies and derive their law ultimately from the authority from a crown

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    canada is supposed to only be connected symbolically. We even gave them a fuckload of canada geese as a thinly veiled fuck you

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Canada are equally as much a monarchy as the UK in legal and ceremonial mechanisms, same as all the others. Functionally their democracies all work extremely similarly for most Commonwealth derived countries

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Well, the EU is not a monarchy, and Canada/Australia/NZ have been distancing themselves from the UK, so maybe not exactly what I was talking about, but I still hold that this is not the action of a fair and just system.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The EU isn't a monarchy but the OP meant that there's still a number of constitutional monarchies in the union.

    Also Canada and Australia aren't really the best examples here. Speaking as a Canadian, we've been actually increasing our ties to the UK as Americans continue their assault on our economy and continue to insult our sovereignty.

    Regarding the genocide, we have banned exports to Israel for anything that can be used to murder Palestinians, but the loopholes are so large that it's basically meaningless and our government refuses to close them

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    We only banned new permits and you siad it we are allowing loopholes so we are selling materisl and wespons used to kill Palestinians . We also allows the selling on occupied land in synaguoges and allowing idf terrorists in our schools.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    A majority of the EUs member states are monarchies and the Commonwealth nations have not distanced themselves legally or ceremonially on any meaningful way that I'm aware of in recent history

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    There are 6 monarchies in the EU out of 27 member states. Stop lying.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    You're correct. There are 12 European monarchies but a number of the city-states are not technically EU member states. I should have said Europe rather than EU, and I was outright incorrect to say majority.

    Does it change any of what I've said? Many of the most well developed countries on the planet are monarchies. The original intent of my post was to call that out

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Isn't it more like they accused them of damaging property, the jury agreed that they did damage property and the judge decides that the damage was serious enough to fall under terrorism? It's like mitigating circumstances. The jury decides if a parson did X but it's up to the judge to decide if any mitigating circumstances should apply before sentencing. Here the circumstances are aggravating.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    But they weren't convicted of terrorism, which has a legal definition. So the judge shouldn't be considering it as an aggravating circumstance since there's no terrorism conviction.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    The aggravation is terrorist connection , not terrorism. They don't have to be convicted of terrorism for the terrorism connection aggravation to apply.

    https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/guidelines/offences-with-a-terrorist-connection-guidance/

    From what I've read Schedule 1 are terrorism related charges. As you can see terrorist connection aggravation can be applied to crimes covered and not covered by Schedule 1.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    To make this determination the court may hear evidence, and must take account of any representations made by the parties.

    This did not happen as far as I can tell. Neither are any of the listed examples applicable.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    You're saying the activist where not allowed to testify? I doubt that. This covers offenses specified in Schedule 1 and not specified in Schedule 1 so anything can apply.

    But most importantly, aggravating is a very concrete thing. Jury doesn't have to know anything about it because it's not a charge. There's a charge that the jury decides upon and aggregating/mitigating circumstances that the judge decides. The central claim of the article, that the activist will be sentenced for some crimes the jury didn't know about is pure manipulation.

    I imagine they can fight the verdict in higher court and they can appeal the aggregation and maybe it will be determined that the judge was wrong here but what the article implies is simply a lie.

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