Bid to block Palestine Action ban to be heard by court
The move was announced after two Voyager aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on June 20, an incident claimed by Palestine Action, which police said caused around £7 million worth of damage.
At a hearing on Friday, Mr Justice Chamberlain is due to decide whether to grant 'interim relief' to Ms Ammori, which would temporarily block the legislation from coming into effect at midnight on Saturday as currently planned.
The hearing is due to begin at 10.30am at the Royal Courts of Justice, with a further hearing to decide whether Ms Ammori will be given the green light to challenge the Government's decision expected to be held later in July.
Ms Cooper announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action on June 23, stating that the vandalism of the two planes was 'disgraceful' and that the group had a 'long history of unacceptable criminal damage'.
MPs in the Commons voted 385 to 26, majority 359, in favour of proscribing the group on Wednesday, before the House of Lords backed the move without a vote on Thursday.
Four people – Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, Jony Cink, 24, Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 36, and Lewis Chiaramello, 22 – have all been charged in connection with the incident.
They appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday after being charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom, and conspiracy to commit criminal damage, under the Criminal Law Act 1977.
They were remanded into custody and will appear at the Old Bailey on July 18.
Counter Terrorism Policing South East said on Wednesday that a 41-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender had been released on bail until September 19, and a 23-year-old man who was arrested has been released without charge.
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Spectator
23 minutes ago
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Corbyn is following in the footsteps of the French left
Labour has reacted with scorn to the news that Zarah Sultana has resigned from the party to create a new movement with Jeremy Corbyn. It's reported that the MP for Coventry South, who has sat as an independent since July 2024, is still discussing the details of the new party with Corbyn – who is yet to comment on the new outfit – but whatever its form, Labour is unfazed. Gurinder Singh Josan, the MP for Smethwick, mocked Sultana for returning to 'the irrelevance of the far left'. Another MP, David Taylor said it was a case of 'good riddance' and suggested any other Labour MP opposed to the proscription of Palestine Action should 'follow suit'. Labour's crowing might come back to haunt them. One suspects Sultana and Corbyn have been hatching something for a while. They may have been inspired first by the success of Jean-Luc Melenchon's la France Insoumise (LFI), and, more recently, the stunning victory of Zohran Mamdani in last month's Democratic primary for mayor of New York. Mamdani's defeat of Andrew Cuomo was celebrated by Melenchon, who wrote of the victor on X: Opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, he is obviously already accused of anti-Semitism. He won against a figurehead of the centre-left backed by the local leaders of the cheating Democratic party. As in France, continued Mélenchon, it is now the radical left and not the 'traditional' left which represents the people. Melenchon is on good terms with Sanders and Corbyn, a trio of ageing Marxists (their combined age is 232) who have not mellowed with the passing of time. Melenchon met Sanders when he visited New York in April this year to give his first address to an American audience. He also found time to endorse Mamdani. The Frenchman's association with Corbyn stretches back many years. In a 2022 interview with a French magazine, Corbyn's biographer, Tom Bower, described the pair as ideological 'cousins'. In 2015 the New Statesman interviewed Melenchon shortly after Corbyn had been elected leader of the Labour party. A delighted Melenchon described Corbyn as 'unique in Europe' because his was the only case where an 'alternative has arisen within a socialist party and won'. Melenchon's own political career was flagging a decade ago. An outcast from the Socialist party, he had witnessed the bulk of France's white working-class vote for Marine Le Pen in the 2012 presidential election. Melenchon's problem was that on several issues his views barely diverged from those of Le Pen: the pair were Eurosceptics and protectionists, and also opposed to the wearing of the burka in public. 'To walk in the street entirely covered is a denial of the human right to see someone's face,' Melenchon told the New Statesman. He also reiterated his support for French secularism. 'We're secularists and we're attached to the secularism of the French state: no politics in religion, no religion in politics,' he said. 'I don't have a position on Islam just as I don't have a position on Catholicism, Judaism and Protestantism…because I'm elected for all French people.' These remarks weren't forgotten by some on the British left who opposed the invitation extended to him to attend the Labour party conference in 2018. They needn't have worried because by the time Melenchon arrived in Liverpool for the conference, he was a different man from the one of 2015. His Damascus Road experience began in 2016 when he founded la France Insoumise. A year later he polled 7 million votes in the first round of the presidential election (three million more than he'd managed in 2012 as leader of the Left Party). Melenchon was only 600,000 votes shy of Marine Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in the second round run-off. How best to close that gap? Le Pen was the champion of the white working-class so Melenchon chose to become the figurehead for the demographic that the Western left regards as the oppressed of the 21st century: Muslims. Given that there are over six million Muslims in France, it was a canny move. In the 2022 presidential election, Melenchon increased his votes to 7.7 million and was now just 400,000 votes behind Le Pen. At this point, Melenchon may have realised his age and ethnicity were a brake on his ambition. He needed a young, charismatic Muslim to speak to France's minorities. Step forward Rima Hassan, who was elected an MEP for LFI in last year's European elections, a campaign in which 62 per cent of French Muslims voted for the party. The 33-year-old was born in a Syrian refugee camp to Palestinian parents. Before 2024 no one in France had heard of her. In a recent poll in Paris Match, she was ranked 44th on the list of most popular personalities. 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ITV News
25 minutes ago
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Home Office unaware how many migrants have overstayed skilled visas, MPs say
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Western Telegraph
30 minutes ago
- Western Telegraph
Palestine Action ban would be ‘authoritarian abuse' of power, High Court told
Huda Ammori, the co-founder of Palestine Action, is asking the High Court to temporarily block the Government from banning the group as a terrorist organisation before a potential legal challenge against the decision to proscribe it under the Terrorism Act 2000. The move is set to come into force at midnight after being approved by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords earlier this week, and would make membership and support for the direct action group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. It comes after an estimated £7 million worth of damage was caused to two Voyager planes at RAF Brize Norton on June 20, in an action claimed by Palestine Action. The Home Office is opposing bids to delay the ban from becoming law, and the potential launch of a legal challenge against the decision. At a hearing on Friday, Raza Husain KC, for Ms Ammori, said that his client had been 'inspired' by a long history of direct action in the UK, 'from the suffragettes, to anti-apartheid activists, to Iraq war activists'. Quoting Ms Ammori, the barrister continued that the group had 'never encouraged harm to any person at all' and that its goal 'is to put ourselves in the way of the military machine'. He continued: 'We ask you, in the first instance, to suspend until July 21 what we say is an ill-considered, discriminatory and authoritarian abuse of statutory power which is alien to the basic tradition of the common law and is contrary to the Human Rights Act.' Mr Justice Chamberlain said that if he decided to temporarily block the ban, he could do that with either an 'interim declaration' or by making an injunction 'requiring the Secretary of State to make an order'. A further hearing to decide whether Ms Ammori will be given the green light to challenge the decision to ban Palestine Action is expected to be heard later this month. The planned ban has prompted protests in support of Palestine Action (Lucy North/PA) The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action on June 23, stating that the vandalism of the two planes was 'disgraceful' and that the group had a 'long history of unacceptable criminal damage'. Police said that the incident caused around £7 million worth of damage, with four people charged in connection with the incident. Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, Jony Cink, 24, Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 36, and Lewis Chiaramello, 22, are accused of conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom, and conspiracy to commit criminal damage. They were remanded into custody after appearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court and will appear at the Old Bailey on July 18. The hearing before Mr Justice Chamberlain will conclude later on Friday, with the High Court judge expected to give his decision at the end of the hearing.
