Seven Pro-Palestinian Activists Charged Over Break-In at Israeli Arms Company’s U.K. Site

[Pelican Press 0]

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Seven Pro-************ Activists Charged Over Break-In at ******** Arms Company’s U.K. Site

British counterterrorism police charged seven people with violent disorder on Tuesday, after a group of pro-************ demonstrators forced their way into a building owned by an ******** defense firm in southwest England.

Seven people ages 20 to 51 were charged with ********* damage and violent disorder, the police said in

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. One man, age 22, was also charged with ********.

The Crown Prosecution Service, the public prosecutor for England and Wales, said it would argue in a

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hearing on Tuesday “that these offenses have a ********** connection.”

The seven individuals are accused of taking part in a raid in the early hours of Aug. 6 that targeted Elbit, an ******** defense firm whose British subsidiaries employ around 700 people across 16 sites.

Activists from Palestine Action, a protest movement that aims to disrupt ******** arms manufacturing in Britain, broke into Elbit Systems U.K.’s research and development site, known as Horizon, last week.

The group used a van to drive through a fence,

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. Once inside the building in Filton, near Bristol, the group smashed equipment and damaged property. The police said they found axes, sledgehammers and homemade weapons on the scene. Two police officers were assaulted with a sledgehammer, the statement said, and one of them was taken to a hospital for treatment.

More than a dozen people were in the vehicle, but most fled the scene, the police said. Those who were arrested were held under Britain’s counterterrorism laws, which allow police to detain suspects for up to

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.

Two other people remain in custody while detectives continue to question them. The investigation, which is still ongoing, is being handled by Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing unit.

In a statement, Amnesty International, the human rights group, questioned the use of ********** legislation in the case, and said it had longstanding concerns about such laws being used to “circumvent normal legal protections and to pursue charges that are not commensurate with the facts of a case.”

“The Crown Prosecution Service’s reference to these alleged offenses having a ‘********** connection’ is troubling,” said Tom Southerden, Amnesty’s U.K. law and human rights director. He added, “Ordinary ********* offenses can be investigated and prosecuted using ordinary ********* procedures, a process that helps ensure that the rights of those accused are properly protected.”

Before the charges were announced, Palestine Action said

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that the ******* on Elbit’s site was “to prevent its manufacture of weapons for genocide” and that it wanted to undermine the company’s “profiteering from *******’s daily massacres.”

The activist group accused the police of launching a “smear campaign” against the seven detained people in claiming they had used ********* against police officers and security guards. “The activists are unable to respond to these claims, and unable to describe for public record the force used against them by police and private security,” the statement said.

Palestine Action, which was founded in 2020, has repeatedly targeted Elbit’s drone and surveillance manufacturing sites by vandalizing property, spray-painting slogans and occupying a rooftop.

Elbit said that the Horizon facility did not supply any weapons or technology to the ******** military or its ministry of defense.

“We provide critical support and advanced technology to the British Armed Forces from our Horizon site,” the group said in a statement.

The weapons manufacturer opened the site in July last year, producing technology for the British Armed Forces and other NATO countries, it

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at the time.

Rawan Yaghi contributed reporting.

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#ProPalestinian #Activists #Charged #BreakIn #******** #Arms #Companys #U.K #Site

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