Grandmothers arrested at Palestine protest ‘robustly deny any criminal offence'
Ms Pentel, 72, was detained by officers along with Martine McCullough, aged in her 50s, on May 24 while protesting outside the bank in Castle Place over an incident at a previous protest at the bank on April 26.
The two attended Musgrave Street police station in Belfast city centre on Wednesday morning for the pre-arranged interview under caution.
Fellow campaigners staged a protest in solidarity with the women outside the station, with applause and calls of 'we're with you' as they arrived.
Solicitor Padraig O Muirigh, who represents the two women, said they 'robustly deny that they have committed any criminal offence'.
'Our clients have been involved in peaceful protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza which has been ongoing now for 628 days,' he said.
'Today's interviews under caution follow their arrests on the 24th May 2025.
'My clients robustly deny that they have committed any criminal offence and maintain that they should not be subjected to criminal investigations for exercising their right to peaceful protest against the atrocities being committed in Gaza.'
He added: 'Our clients will robustly contest their innocence and defend their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights to freedom of assembly and expression if a decision is made to prosecute them.'
Jewish grandmother Ms Pentel is a high-profile campaigner against Israel's military offensive on Gaza.
Videos circulated online of the arrest of Ms Pentel indicate the alleged offence related to the placing of stickers on the bank's ATM machine.
Barclays has been a target for pro-Palestine protesters who claim the bank is linked to companies supplying weapons to Israel.
Barclays has previously addressed the criticism, saying it provides financial services to nine defence companies supplying Israel but does not directly invest in such firms.
The bank has said it has become the target of a disinformation campaign over its ties to defence companies.
Speaking earlier on Wednesday, Ms Pentel said they are 'proud to peacefully protest outside Barclays'.
'We've been doing it for the last eight months,' she said.
'To protest the genocide, to protest the violence, to protest the way that Israel feels its OK to starve children, to stop humanitarian aid while the world looks on.
'Well, we won't look on, we won't remain silent.'
She added: 'We understand that we've been asked to be interviewed under caution, and we're voluntarily going in about an incident on April 26 and all we can say is we're proud to demonstrate with our amazing colleagues every week outside Barclays.
'We have the right to peacefully protest, we want to thank our solicitor Padraig O Muirigh for his time and advice.
'We have the right to peacefully protest and we will continue to do it until the genocide stops.
'We're two grandmothers, when our grandchildren ask us what we did, we know what we'll say, we stood up, we spoke out, we weren't silent, and as a Jewish person I am absolutely ashamed of anybody either Israeli Jewish or London Jewish or wherever who doesn't stand up and who thinks this is OK.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
40 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Israel is put 'on notice' as it may be placed on the UN's blacklist over sex violence claims
Israel has been put 'on notice' that it may be placed on the United Nations ' blacklist for countries suspected of committing sexual violence in armed conflict. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has cited 'grave concern' over multiple allegations that Palestinian prisoners have been subjected to degrading treatment in prisons, a detention facility and a military base. It comes as Hamas was added to the list of shame for the first time last night – marking formal acknowledgment for its crimes on October 7, 2023 and to the hostages since that attack. Israel was not listed on the 2025 annual report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence despite the warning. Guterres wrote to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon on Monday citing concern over his country's refusal to grant UN inspectors access to areas where allegations have been made. The Secretary General said Israel must take steps to avoid being blacklisted including issuing directives against sexual violence. Allegations cited by the UN include accounts of rape of male Palestinian detainees.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Aid groups say Israel's new registration rules are ‘weaponising aid'
More than 100 aid organisations working in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have accused Israel of dangerously 'weaponising aid' in its application of new rules for registering groups involved in delivering humanitarian assistance. The letter represents the latest broadside from the international aid community against Israel after the EU, Britain and Japan on Tuesday called for urgent action to stop 'famine' spreading in the Gaza Strip. The letter was published as Gaza's health authority reported continuing deaths from malnutrition in the besieged Palestinian territory, and amid threats by Israel to take full military control of the coastal strip with reports in Hebrew media suggesting the country may be planning to mobilise up to 100,000 reservists for the new offensive. The letter, signed by organisations including Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières and Care, was written in response to registration rules announced by Israel in March that require organisations to hand over lists of their donors and Palestinian staff for vetting. The groups contend that doing so could endanger their staff and give Israel broad grounds to block aid if groups are deemed to be 'delegitimising' the country or supporting boycotts or divestment. The registration measures were 'designed to control independent organisations, silence advocacy and censor humanitarian reporting', they said. The letter added: 'This obstruction has left millions of dollars' worth of food, medicine, water and shelter items stranded in warehouses across Jordan and Egypt.' On Tuesday, Israel's ministry for diaspora and combating antisemitism said it had revoked the work permits of 10 NGOs that had applied for authorisations. Under the new rules, which are vague and broad-reaching, a team led by the diaspora ministry can refuse registration to aid groups if they or their members published calls to boycott Israel in the past seven years; if there is 'reasonable basis to assume' that they oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state; or if they 'actively advance delegitimisation activities against the state of Israel'. The aid groups' letter said the rules violated European data privacy regulations, noting that in some cases aid groups had been given only seven days to comply. 'Instead of clearing the growing backlog of goods, Israeli authorities have rejected requests from dozens of NGOs to bring in lifesaving goods, citing that these organisations are 'not authorised to deliver aid',' the letter added, saying that 60 requests from 29 organisations were denied in July citing this justification. Cogat, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, denied the letter's claims, adding without evidence that aid groups were being used as cover by Hamas to 'exploit the aid to strengthen its military capabilities and consolidate its control', despite the fact that Israel already claims to control 75% of Gaza. The aid groups stressed on Thursday that most of them had not been able to deliver 'a single truck' of life-saving assistance since Israel implemented a blockade in March. The vast majority of aid is not reaching civilians in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed, most of the population has been displaced and famine is taking hold. UN agencies and a small number of aid groups have resumed delivering assistance, but say the number of trucks allowed in remains far from sufficient. The letter was published as Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, backed plans for a major settlement development outside Jerusalem, which he said would represent the 'final nail in the coffin' of Palestinian ambitions for their own state. The E1 settlement plan for more than 3,000 housing units – which critics, including much of the international community, say would split the West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem – is highly likely to be approved by a planning body next week. But it still remains uncertain whether the plan, which has been frozen for more than five years, will advance, given the likely international fallout. While his support for the plan was announced by Smotrich at a press conference on Thursday, it remains uncertain how much backing it has from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as does the attitude of Donald Trump's White House. Smotrich's comments come after many countries said they would recognise a Palestinian state in September. 'This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,' said Smotrich, whose extremist party has experienced a collapse in support.
STV News
3 hours ago
- STV News
Israel announces West Bank settlement that will 'bury' idea of Palestinian state
Israel is developing plans to build thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank, in a move that would 'permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state', Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said. The E1 settlement project, which seeks to connect Jerusalem to the settlement of Maale Adumim and essentially split the West Bank in two, would effectively make it impossible to create a future Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The announcement comes as an increasing number of countries, including the UK, France and Canada, are announcing they would recognise a Palestinian state from September. Smotrich presented the advances in the project as Israel's response to those announcements. The project has been in the works for two decades, but progress has been frozen due to strong international opposition. Smitroch announced on Thursday that approval for 3,401 new houses was currently pending, with final approval expected next week. An area in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says housing units will be built. / Credit: AP He was speaking at press conference held at a planned construction site. 'They will talk about a Palestinian dream, and we will continue to build a Jewish reality,' Smotrich said. 'This reality is what will permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise.' He has repeatedly lobbied Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex the occupied West Bank and apply Israeli sovereignty to the entire territory. Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning. Palestinian officials were quick to criticise the plans. In a statement, the presidency of the Palestinian National Council described them as a 'systemic plan to steal land, Judaize it, and impose biblical and Talmudic facts on the conflict'. Palestinian Speaker Rawhi Fattouh said the 'colonial plan falls within the policy of creeping annexation' of the West Bank, which is accompanied by settler violence against Palestinians. Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now described the E1 plan as 'deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution'. All petitions to stop the construction were rejected by the planning committee on August 6. Palestinians in the West Bank Israel's plans for construction in the West Bank are contributing to increasingly difficult circumstances for Palestinians living in the West Bank as much of the focus is instead on Gaza, around 40 kilometres away from the occupied territory. Attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have increased since October 7, 2023, while evictions from towns and an increased number of checkpoints have made life harder for those living there. More than 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state. Would this be legal? Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. But during the first Trump administration, the State Department reversed longstanding US policy and ruled settlements were 'not inconsistent' with international law. The Biden administration left this new policy in place. Could other countries take in displaced Palestinians? Prime Minister Netanyahu has said there are talks underway with a number of countries about taking in Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza. South Sudan, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Libya and Indonesia are all involved in those talks, according to a senior Israeli official who spoke to ITV News' American partner CNN. In exchange for taking in some of Gaza's population of more than two million people, the official said the countries are looking for 'significant financial and international compensation'. But the countries have not individually confirmed what part they could play. On Wednesday, South Sudan rejected a report that it was in discussions about the resettlement of Palestinians, saying in a statement the reports were 'baseless and do not reflect the official position' of the country. Somaliland also said there were no such talks earlier in the year. Last week Indonesia said it was ready to take in 2,000 Palestinians from Gaza for treatment but that they would return to Gaza once they recovered. Netanyahu has never given a detailed vision of what will happen to Gaza after the war but has repeatedly advocated for resettling displaced Palestinians in other countries, particularly after President Donald Trump floated the idea in January. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
