More than 500 individuals arrested at Palestine Action rally in London | EUROtoday

Police in London stated that they had arrested greater than 500 pro-Palestinian protesters at an illustration in assist of the banned group Palestine Action on Saturday.

Officers carried away activists to cheers and clapping from different demonstrators who gathered for the sit-down demonstration within the capital’s Trafalgar Square.

The protesters held placards in assist of the banned group Palestine Action, making them answerable for arrest.

London’s Metropolitan Police stated on social media platform X simply earlier than midnight that that they had arrested 523 individuals aged between 18 and 87.

Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July, making it a prison offence to belong to or assist the group, punishable by as much as 14 years in jail.

Read extraUK’s choice to ban Palestine Action as terrorist group was illegal, court docket guidelines

The High Court in London upheld a problem to the ban in mid-February, saying it had interfered with the correct to freedom of speech.

The authorities has been granted depart to enchantment towards the choice.

London’s Metropolitan Police paused arrests within the wake of the High Court ruling earlier than asserting in late March that they might resume.

“It’s really important to continue to show up,” stated Freya, 28, supervisor of a London environmental organisation, a type of sitting in direction of the entrance of the gang of protesters.

“It’s important that we all continue to oppose genocide… The government might flip-flop in their legal argument but the morals of these people (here) do not change,” she stated.

‘Misguided crackdown’

There have been almost 3,000 arrests for the reason that ban on Palestine Action was imposed, primarily for carrying placards defending it. Hundreds of persons are going through costs.

Protester Denis MacDermot, 73, from Edinburgh, stated he had been arrested earlier than and had no hesitation about turning out once more.

“I’m a supporter of these great people,” he stated, waving in direction of different protesters, including that if the court docket course of was definitive “there would be no need for all this”.

Protest organisers Defend Our Juries stated a whole bunch of individuals had taken half in Saturday’s demonstration, protesting towards “the UK Government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the misguided crackdown on peaceful protest at home”.

Police have been “choosing to make arrests despite the government’s ban on the group being ruled unlawful by the High Court, and leading lawyers warning that any arrests would be unlawful”, it added in a press release.

Amnesty UK condemned the arrests as “yet another blow to civil liberties in this country”.

“The Met rightly said it would stop making arrests. It has now gone back to its old, failed policy – mass arrests of people holding pieces of card, including today an elderly woman with walking sticks,” it stated in a press release on X.

The ban, which put Palestine Action on a blacklist that additionally contains Palestinian militants Hamas and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, has sparked extreme backlash.

A choose has placed on maintain all trials of individuals charged with supporting Palestine Action, scheduling a blanket assessment of instances for July 30.

Set up in 2020, Palestine Action’s acknowledged aim on its now-blocked web site is to finish “global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.

It has primarily focused weapons factories, particularly these belonging to the Israeli defence group Elbit Systems.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)