Women protesting over Israel's Gaza actions arrested in Belfast
The PSNI has defended the arrests of two women, one of whom is a pensioner during a pro-Palestinian protest in Belfast.
Sue Pentel, a long-standing campaigner and Martine McCullough were detained by police outside a Barclays Bank branch in Castle Place on Saturday.
Both were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage. The PSNI said its actions were lawful and proportionate
Speaking to UTV earlier today, the women criticised the PSNI's actions.
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.The pensioner and the other woman who was arrested, aged in her 50s, were released later on Saturday pending a report to Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service (PPS).Ms Pentel's solicitor Padraig O Muirigh said: 'Our client has refused to remain silent whilst thousands of innocent children have been killed, and many more thousands are starving as food and medicine is refused entry into Palestine.'She has committed no offence and should not be criminalised for exercising her right to peaceful protesting these ongoing atrocities.'Our client will robustly contest any attempt to criminalise her if a decision is made to prosecute.'Mr O Muirigh said he would also be advising Ms Pentel in 'relation to the lawfulness of her arrest'.Sinn Fein Assembly member Pat Sheehan described the police actions as 'disgraceful'.'We will be raising our concerns directly with the PSNI,' he said.In a statement, the PSNI said police received a report relating to a protest in the Castle Place area of Belfast city centre on Saturday morning.A spokesman confirmed two people were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.He said the women were later released pending a report to the PPS.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.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
Owen Jones: The UK media has ignored this hugely revealing scandal
And yet Benjamin Netanyahu – the Israeli prime minister subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant – has been accused of forging this alliance by the Israeli political class. And yet – once again – the Westminster media has overwhelmingly failed to cover this latest profoundly revealing scandal. Avigdor Lieberman is a far-right opposition leader who once served as Netanyahu's deputy prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister. This week, he publicly announced: 'The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State, at the direction of the prime minister.' Did Netanyahu come out swinging, accusing his opponent of antisemitism, as he did when another opposition leader, former Israeli general Yair Golan, declared that Israel was killing babies as a hobby? READ MORE: Patrick Harvie: Increased UK defence spending only makes war more likely He did not. Instead, Netanyahu bragged that 'Israel is working to defeat Hamas in various ways, on the recommendation of all heads of the security establishment'. In a video message, he clarified that Israel had 'activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas', shamelessly calling it 'a good thing' which was saving the lives of Israeli soldiers. 'What's wrong with that?' We're talking here about a militia headed by a man named Yasser Abu Shabab. He styles his faction as the 'Anti Terror Service', but it is a criminal gang operating in an area of Rafah firmly under Israeli military control. His own family has not only disowned him, but backed his execution. According to Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada, his militia is composed of 300 'drug dealers and criminals.' And here's the important detail. To justify imposing a total siege on Gaza, Israel claimed that Hamas was stealing humanitarian food. Among those pointing out this wasn't true was Cindy McCain, widow of the late hawkish Republican senator John McCain, and now director of the World Food Programme. But we do know that Shabab's Israel-backed gang has been stealing aid. As ever with the Israeli authorities: every accusation is a confession. This is just another plank of Israel's starvation policy. But again, the Western media has overwhelmingly failed to clearly spell out what Israel is actually doing. Having imposed a total siege on Gaza since March 2, Israel set up a US-backed shadow entity named the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to explicitly supplant the UN. It hasn't just been rejected by every aid agency – even the US marine who heads it resigned on the basis it contradicted the basic principles of humanitarianism. The Foundation set three aid checkpoints in the south in an effort to concentrate Gaza's entire population into a confined area – a concentration camp. Too little aid was delivered, much of it unusable given the siege on cooking materials. But in any case, the Israeli military repeatedly fired on starving Palestinians. In the words of Tory MP Kit Malthouse, the UN system had been replaced with a 'shooting range, an abattoir'. But when the Israeli military massacred dozens of starving Palestinians, they deployed their usual strategy: deceive, deflect, deny, distort. Even though the shootings happened in an Israeli military zone, and despite the overwhelming evidence of Israeli lies, the Western media indulged Israeli claims that Hamas was responsible as if they were credible. CNN belatedly published a clear rebuttal of Israeli lies, but attention had already moved on. As ever, the Western media overall fail to allow Israeli responsibility for atrocities to stick. And yet now, even as Yair Lapid – the main opposition leader – states Netanyahu is 'giving weapons to organisations close to ISIS in Gaza', this latest plank of Israel's starvation strategy barely gets any coverage. This is despite Israel's 'Hamas is ISIS' campaign long being used to justify the genocide. This all fits a classic pattern, of course. Israel encouraged the rise of Hamas in the 1980s in order to undermine its public enemy number one at the time, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. More recently, Netanyahu worked with Qatar to transfer money to prop up Hamas – with the hope of dividing the Palestinian nation and movement so an independent state was impossible. Remember too how the West armed and backed the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, playing a crucial role in creating the global Islamist fundamentalist movement. You would think the Western media might take an interest given the precedents. It is true that there is a shift taking place. Israeli spokespeople are suddenly being taken apart on mainstream television. Sky News is demanding the Prime Minister answer if genocide is taking place. But the media narrative still has not clearly shifted to reality – that is, a crime of historic proportions is being facilitated by Western governments, which means questions should be focused on 'how can this crime be stopped, and perpetrators held to justice' rather than 'is Israel doing something very bad here?' The latter is an improvement on where the narrative was stuck for so long – which was essentially 'Israel is waging a war of self-defence', with a side debate about whether the 'response' was 'proportionate'. What is clear is that an understanding is creeping into the political and media elites that a reckoning is coming, where those who facilitated this abomination will be forced to answer for what they did and what they didn't do. Time is running out.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Conference to recognise Palestinian state to weaken scope of its ambition, diplomats say
A planned conference in Saudi Arabia this month that supporters of Palestine had hoped would push western governments to recognise a Palestinian state has weakened its ambition and will instead hope to agree on steps towards recognition, diplomats have said. The change to the aims of the conference, due to be held between 17 and 20 June, marks a retreat from an earlier vision that it would mark a joint declaration of recognition of Palestine as a state by a large group of countries, including permanent UN security council members France and the UK. Emmanuel Macron, the French president and a co-sponsor of the event, has declared recognition of Palestine as 'a moral duty and political requirement', but French officials briefing their Israeli counterparts this week reassured them the conference will not be the moment for recognition. That is now seen as a prize that will emerge from other measures, including a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages, reform of the Palestinian Authority, economic reconstruction and a definitive end to Hamas's rule in Gaza. France and Saudi Arabia have set up eight working parties to prepare the necessary ingredients for a two-state solution, and Macron is hosting a conference of civil society under the banner of the Paris Peace Forum immediately before the three-day conference. The UK is overseeing the humanitarian working party and other working groups cover reconstruction, economic viability of a Palestinian state, promoting respect for international law, narratives for peace and 'peace day', an imagining of the benefits to both sides from a peaceful settlement. Israel and the US have attended run-up meetings to the conference but have not spoken, prompting speculation they may boycott the event. Israel has fought hard to prevent stateless Palestinians achieving self-determination. Polls show only a fifth of the Israel electorate favour a two-state solution and 56% of Jewish Israelis supported the 'transfer of Arab citizens of Israel to other countries'. Israel has also approved plans to build a further 22 settlements in the West Bank – the biggest expansion in decades. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said it was 'a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state'. Macron's initiative has been described as 'disastrous' by the Israel's ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka. Recognition of a Palestinian state was previously seen as an outcome of a failed 1990s-era two-state plan. However, governments in Europe increasingly doubt Israel has any intention to ease its control over Palestinians and see recognition as a possible lever to force a change of thinking among Israeli officials. Ireland, Spain and Norway recognised a Palestinian state last year. Macron has insisted he would only recognise a Palestinian state without Hamas – the same stance as the UK. In an open letter to Macron, The Elders, a group of former senior UN diplomats, say recognition is 'an essential transformative step towards peace' that should be taken as a matter of principle, divorced from negotiations over the ultimate form of Palestinian statehood and how and when Hamas should be disarmed. Anne-Claire Legendre, the president's adviser on the Middle East, has said the conference 'must mark a transformative milestone for the effective implementation of the two-state solution. We must move from words to deeds, and we must move from the end of the war in Gaza to the end of the conflict.' She met Israeli officials this week to discuss the conference and Israel's often cloudy long-term vision for the region. She also met the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Mustafa. Israeli newspapers reported the travelling French officials as saying: 'The recognition of a Palestinian state remains on the table, but not as a product of the conference. This will remain a bilateral subject between states.' The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, who is expected to attend the conference, is under massive backbench pressure to do more to punish Israel and is, at minimum, being asked flesh out the conditions for the UK recognition of a Palestinian state. Hamish Falconer, the Middle East minister, told MPs this week the UK thinking was evolving. 'One reason that the traditional position of the UK government has been that the recognition of a Palestinian state should come at the end, or during, a two-state solution process was the hope that we would move towards a two-state solution,' he said. 'Many minds have been changed because of the rhetoric of the Israeli government – the clear statements by so many that they are no longer committed to a two-state solution.' But the British are looking for firm undertakings at the conference on the future government of Palestine, including the exclusion of Hamas from any future governance of Gaza, which is something Hamas itself has appeared to accept in the various plans drawn up by Arab states. A growing number of Conservative MPs have broken with their frontbench on the issue and now back recognition, including the former attorney general Sir Jeremy Wright. France hopes that a group of western states recognising a Palestinian state could be counter-balanced by Muslim states normalising relations with Israel. However, Saudi recognition of Israel seems impossible. The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the other co-host, has asserted repeatedly that Israel is committing a genocide, a view that is shared widely by Saudi public opinion.
Belfast Telegraph
12 hours ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Family with young baby left traumatised after racially motivated arson attack on car: ‘We can't live like this'
Police have said they are also reviewing a number of recent incidents in the Rathcoole area to establish whether they are linked. Police also said local patrols in the area following the attack 'will be increased'. The vehicles sustained significant damage during the attack, footage of which was captured on the victim's CCTV camera. Cars damaged in racially motivated arson attacks in Rathcoole Two individuals can be seen approaching the car, before setting it alight and making off down an adjacent street. The victim – a black man – and his partner, who is from the Republic of Ireland, have a young child. "It is ridiculous. It is traumatic. We have an 18-month-old baby and we can't live like this,' he told the Belfast Telegraph. "Both of the cars were burned. I am black and my partner is Irish. This is the fourth time, but I've never seen it like this. This was the biggest attack. "It is embarrassing too. I pay my rent here, nobody has given me this free. I'm not on any benefits or anything. "I don't have any other choice than to be here. I am scared – where am I going to go to?' A PSNI spokesperson said they were investigating a number of reports of criminal damage in the area which they believe to be racially motivated. Chief Inspector Mullan said: 'My officers are investigating two arson incidents which occurred on Thursday evening, June 5. "There have been several other hate crimes in this area in recent weeks and we will be reviewing all of the incidents to try to establish if they are linked. "Enquiries into both incidents, which are being treated as hate crimes, are ongoing, and we are appealing to anyone with any information which might assist us to come forward. "The number to call is 101, quoting reference number 1825 05/06/25. 'These kind of attacks are completely unacceptable, and I want to make it clear that Police will do everything in their power to identify the offenders and bring them before the courts. 'We will be conducting a thorough investigation, and local patrols will be increased in this area as we work to bring this criminality, which has no place in our society, to an end. 'The police cannot prevent and detect this behaviour alone and I would ask for the support of elected representatives, partner agencies, community leaders and local residents to work with us and help us to end these attacks. "These attacks are impacting on families living in the area, some of whom have young families.'
