Starmer Needs Palestine Action Crushed; Filton Retrial Hands Him a Problem

Starmer needed those Filton convictions to bury Palestine Action as a terror problem; instead the retrial has put state machinations in the dock. Right, so Keir Starmer’s Filton retrial has not given him the clean Palestine Action crushing he needed. It has given him four criminal damage convictions, two acquittals, a rejected GBH with intent charge, a defence barrister now facing contempt proceedings, defendants sent back to prison before sentencing, and a terrorism label still hovering over a case where nobody has been convicted of terrorism. That is a filthy little mess to carry out of court while pretending justice has been done. Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Zainab Rajwani have been found guilty of criminal damage over the action at Elbit Systems UK’s Filton site near Bristol. Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin have been acquitted, even though all of them admitted to causing criminal damage. Work that one out. Samuel Corner has also been convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm, but he has been cleared of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, which is not a small distinction when the state has spent months trying to make this case smell as threatening as possible. Four people have been convicted of damaging property, not of terrorism, not of aggravated burglary, and not of intentionally causing serious injury. The state has convictions, but it does not have the tidy terror-shaped courtroom trophy it really wanted going into the sentencing hearing on 12 June and yet still we wonder whether terror level sentencing may yet still be handed down. Elbit Systems UK is the British arm of the now infamous Israeli arms company, and the Filton site has been described in court coverage as a key research and development facility.