LONDON, July 4 – A co-founder of pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action asked a London court on Friday to pause a British government decision to ban it under anti-terrorism laws, a move her lawyers said was an “authoritarian abuse” of the law.
Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, asked London’s High Court to stop the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, before a full hearing of her case that banning Palestine Action is unlawful later this month.
British lawmakers this week decided to ban the group in response to its activists breaking into a Royal Air Force base and damaging two planes, a protest against what it says is Britain’s support for Israel.
Proscription would make it a crime to be a member of Palestine Action that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Proscribed groups under British law include Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Palestine Action has increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in Britain with direct action.
Critics of the government’s decision, including some United Nations experts and civil liberties groups, say damaging property does not amount to terrorism.
“This is the first time in our history that a direct action, civil disobedience group which does not advocate for violence has been sought to be proscribed as terrorists,” Ammori’s lawyer, Raza Husain, told the court.
Husain described the government’s decision as “an ill-considered, discriminatory, authoritarian abuse of statutory power that is alien to the basic tradition of the common law”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Britain’s interior minister, said this week that “violence and serious criminal damage has no place in legitimate protests”.
Husain said that “one may disagree with what Palestine Action do and think that criminal damage, trespass and burglary are wrong”, but that designation the group as a terrorist organisation was “an abuse of language”.
A decision on whether to pause Palestine Action’s impending proscription is expected later on Friday.
REUTERS
