Delay PA prosecutions, Quakers and others urge attorney general
Quakers in Britain has joined leading civil liberties organisations in urging Attorney General Richard Hermer to delay prosecuting peaceful protesters arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action.
Some 20 Quakers are amongst hundreds arrested for holding placards in support of the direct-action protest organisation proscribed as a terrorist group last month.
Now international bodies Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Human Rights Watch, Global Witness and Quakers in Britain have written to Hermer, urging him to delay deciding whether to prosecute them until after a judicial review in November.
As the arrests took place under the Terrorism Act, the attorney general makes the decision on how the legal cases should proceed, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Quakers are committed to resisting oppressive state power where this is necessary
- Paul Parker
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The five signatories recommend that he waits until the judicial review of the proscription order has concluded to avoid having to undo a potentially major miscarriage of justice if the proscription is deemed unlawful.
The letter highlights the argument in the judicial review that the proscription of Palestine Action and its legal consequences constitute a disproportionate interference with human rights.
By classifying Palestine Action as a terrorist group, the government has made expressing support for them a crime under the 2000 Terrorism Act.
Hundreds of people, including over 500 on Saturday, 9 August, have broken this prohibition to assert their right to free speech and protest against the government's extension of terrorism to include property damage by protest groups.
Defend Our Juries, who organised the protest on 9 August, has received legal advice that the arrestees could bring cases of wrongful arrest should the proscription be overturned.
Paul Parker, recording clerk of Quakers in Britain, said: "Even before the proscription order, Quakers were concerned that there is a creeping repression of dissent on the part of the state.
"Increasingly unacceptable sanctions are being applied to those who protest. This undermines the trust on which British society is based.
"Quakers are committed to resisting oppressive state power where this is necessary. Sometimes, after deep spiritual searching, Quakers find that this requires us to take action that is against the law. Whilst we respect the laws of the state, our first loyalty must always be to God's purposes.
"These criminal proceedings are based on unsafe law and should be paused until due judicial process has addressed this."