Today’s effective acquittals of six anti-genocide campaigners for smashing up weapons in an arms factory belonging to Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer in Bristol is a triumph for justice and humanity.

Despite the directions of the judge, a jury refused to convict the six activists on charges of aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder for their part in breaking into the factory owned by Elbit Systems in order to disable weapons in August 2024.

The weapons included drones that were being used in the genocide in Gaza, including those that mimic the sounds of children in distress to lure civilians out to help in order to kill them.

Today’s verdicts highlight the growing disjuncture between public opinion which is repulsed by the ongoing genocide and a draconian government whose institutions have effectively been captured by the Zionist state.

They are an indictment of a compromised criminal justice system, from the police who initially arrested the activists under anti-terrorism legislation, to the Crown Prosecution Service who charged them with other offences, to the prison authorities who denied their basic rights in applying punitive anti-terror procedures, and the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, who has refused to comment on the flagrant misuse of anti-terrorism powers and vocally supported the proscription of Palestine Action.

The verdicts also show that where a government refuses to enforce the will of its citizens to oppose the commission of the gravest crime against humanity, ordinary people can and should step up to take the matter into their own hands.

IHRC calls on the authorities to free all the other anti-genocide activists on remand for resisting genocide and cease their harassment of people performing a moral duty that the state itself has abandoned.

“This is a victory for all those who stand against the Gaza genocide and another humiliating rebuke for those who have supported and actively assisted it,” said IHRC chair Massoud Shadjareh. “The case also exposes the government’s motives in attempting to restrict jury trials, something that all right minded people should fiercely oppose.”
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IHRC is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
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