proPalestine

A new report warns that Britain is undergoing a “deeply troubling transformation” in how it treats political protest as climate activists and pro-Palestine campaigners increasingly face lengthy prison sentences, sweeping legal restrictions and months in jail before trial.

The report, Britain’s Political Prisoners, copublished by researchers at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London and the campaign group Defend Our Juries, said the UK has “witnessed an increase in anti-protest powers granted to the police and the courts through legislation” that has “created a significantly more repressive legal terrain for activists engaging in civil disobedience and direct action”.

It traces the shift from crackdowns on protests by Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil to more recent prosecutions linked to Palestine solidarity actions, including campaigns targeting British factories operated by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.

The report, released on Tuesday, found that a combination of new laws, broader police powers and increasingly punitive court tactics has reshaped Britain’s protest landscape since 2019.

The United Kingdom has witnessed numerous mass protests and direct actions by activists to pressure the government to stop selling arms to Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza, in which more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 40,000 women, children and elderly.

So what does Britain’s shifting stance on protests mean for civil rights, and what’s behind the legal clampdown on climate and pro-Palestine protests?

How Britain’s legal system has changed since 2019

The report painted a stark picture of how Britain’s legal system has changed in response to climate and pro-Palestine direct action campaigns through a mix of new laws, expanded police powers and what campaigners describe as increasingly punitive court tactics. What this means for protesters is longer jail sentences, stricter bail conditions and harsher treatment in the courts than was once typical for acts of civil disobedience, according to the report.

At the centre of that shift are two major laws introduced after waves of demonstrations by groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, two environmental groups that employ nonviolent civil disobedience tactics to pressure governments to address the climate crisis.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 transformed the old common law offence of “public nuisance” into a formal criminal offence carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. This means actions that seriously disrupt the public – such as blocking roads, stopping traffic or shutting down infrastructure – can now lead to far more severe criminal penalties than before because the offence was never previously codified into legislation. Campaigners said the law has given prosecutors a powerful new tool to pursue long prison sentences against protesters.

The Public Order Act 2023 introduced a series of protest-specific offences in May of that year, largely in response to climate protests by groups including Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion, whose actions included blocking motorways, occupying oil terminals and targeting infrastructure projects in an attempt to pressure the government to halt new oil and gas extraction.

Such offences under the act included “locking on”, in which protesters attach themselves to roads, buildings, vehicles or each other using chains, glue or other devices to make removal difficult. The law also criminalised tunnelling, a tactic used by some activists to delay infrastructure projects, and introduced offences for disrupting major transport networks, oil terminals and other nationally important infrastructure. 

The legislation also significantly widened police powers whereby officers may now place restrictions on even one-person protests if they are deemed disruptive. Police were also granted powers to carry out stop-and-search operations in designated protest zones without needing reasonable suspicion that someone has committed an offence – a significant expansion of police authority criticised by civil liberties groups.

But the report argued the crackdown extends beyond parliament and into the courts.

One of its central findings is the growing use of civil injunctions and contempt of court proceedings against activists.

Oil companies, arms manufacturers, councils and universities have increasingly obtained court orders banning protests near their sites, the report said.

The report identified contempt of court as the most common route to imprisonment among the 249 protest-related cases it analysed. Contempt of court usually refers to someone disobeying a judge’s order or behaving in a way the court says interferes with justice. In protest cases, it has increasingly been used against activists who ignore injunctions or refuse to follow restrictions imposed during trials.

Because contempt proceedings are handled directly by judges rather than juries, campaigners argued they allow courts to imprison protesters more quickly and with fewer legal safeguards.

Researchers also highlighted what campaigners described as the “gagging” of defendants. Judges have increasingly stopped protesters from mentioning climate concerns, Gaza, international law or their political motivations in front of juries.

Courts have often argued that juries should focus only on whether a defendant broke the law, not on the political or moral reasons behind their actions. Critics said those restrictions prevent activists from fully explaining why they protested in the first place.

Campaigners also said the legal shift reflects a broader political change, driven in part by corporate lobbying under successive Conservative governments and continuing under Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government. They argued that peaceful protest is increasingly being criminalised to protect corporate interests, regardless of wider ethical concerns about the supply of arms to Israel during its war on Gaza or opposing fossil fuel projects linked to the climate crisis.

Perhaps most controversially, the report pointed to the growing use of lengthy pretrial detention. That means protesters being held in prison before they have been convicted of any crime.

According to the findings, many activists spend months on remand awaiting trial while some Palestine Action defendants have been held for more than a year before their cases are heard in court.

In 60 percent of the cases studied, the final sentence handed down was shorter than the time defendants had already spent in custody awaiting trial.

Are lobbyists influencing the crackdown?

Tim Crosland, director of Defend Our Juries, said the findings challenge Britain’s claims of ensuring democratic protections.

“This report strips away the illusion that Britain remains committed to democratic principles,” Crosland said.

“It reveals that peaceful protesters are being jailed in ever-increasing numbers under pressure from the oil and arms industries, the Israeli government and their lobbyists.”

The report pointed to what it described as growing political and corporate pressure behind Britain’s crackdown on protest movements.

Researchers cited reports that parts of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act may have originated in proposals from the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange. According to the investigative news site Open Democracy, Policy Exchange has previously received funding from ExxonMobil. The think tank had earlier published a report titled Extremism Rebellion, which called for new laws targeting Extinction Rebellion activists.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the links between the think tank and the legislation.

The report further alleged that British officials came under pressure from both Elbit Systems and the Israeli government to take a tougher approach towards Palestine Action protests targeting Elbit’s UK factories.

According to correspondence quoted by the researchers, the British government said in 2022 that it had “expressed our support in recognising the attacks and boycott on Elbit UK”. The report said the issue was later raised directly with then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab during a visit to Israel, where he reportedly “declared that the British government is committed to stopping the attacks”.

Zoe Blackler, founding director of the London events space Kairos, said: “In the face of this clampdown on the right to peaceful protest, we need to come together in solidarity and defiance.”

Which are the cases at the centre of Britain’s protest crackdown?

The report traced Britain’s hardening response to the protests through a series of landmark cases involving climate activists and Palestine solidarity campaigners, many of whom received lengthy prison sentences or spent months behind bars before trial.

Among the most high-profile is the case of the Whole Truth Five, a group of Just Stop Oil activists jailed in July 2024 over a Zoom call discussing plans to disrupt the M25 motorway. The five were convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and initially sentenced to between four and five years in prison.

The report described the case as one of the clearest examples of the tougher approach now being taken towards protest movements. Campaigners argued the sentences were extraordinary because the activists were punished largely for planning disruptive action rather than carrying it out. Prosecutors relied on conspiracy laws, which allow people to be charged for agreeing to commit an offence even if the planned action never ultimately happens.

Four Palestine Action activists were also sentenced to between 23 and 27 months for conspiring to damage an Israeli-linked arms factory in Wales. Meanwhile, four Just Stop Oil activists received prison terms of up to 30 months over plans to disrupt Manchester Airport despite never reaching the site. A fifth defendant, Noah Crane, spent almost a year in jail on remand before later being acquitted.

Another major case involved the Filton 24, Palestine Action activists prosecuted after a protest at an Elbit Systems factory in Bristol. Some defendants were held on remand for up to 18 months before trial.

After several activists were acquitted of aggravated burglary charges, most were eventually granted bail.

The report said the case raises “serious concerns” that prosecutors used unusually serious charges to justify holding defendants in prison for long periods before trial.

The report also highlighted the Brize Norton Five, activists accused of spray-painting air force planes in protest against Britain’s military links to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. According to the report, the group has remained on remand since August and is not expected to stand trial until 2027, meaning some could spend close to two years in jail before a verdict is reached.

Other cases revealed the growing use of judicial “gagging orders”.

During the retrial of the Filton 6, a separate trial from the Filton 24, the judge barred defendants from mentioning Gaza, Elbit’s role in supplying weapons to Israel and their political motivations for protesting. Critics argued such restrictions make it harder for juries to hear the broader context behind direct action campaigns.

In another case, three Insulate Britain activists were imprisoned for contempt of court after defying a judge’s order not to mention the “climate crisis” or “fuel poverty” before a jury.

Despite the legal restrictions, several juries continued to acquit activists. The report pointed to acquittals involving Just Stop Oil protesters, Extinction Rebellion activists and a hung jury in the first Filton 6 trial as evidence that some jurors remained unconvinced by the increasingly aggressive prosecution of protest movements.

Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK CEO, told Al Jazeera that “the right to protest is being eroded before our eyes.”

“We’re seeing a worrying shift where the state is using remand, sweeping injunctions and contempt proceedings to lock people up or silence them before they’ve even stood trial.

“The broader legal implications here are concerning. It’s not just about one group of activists; it’s about a systemic attempt to shut down dissent, something we’ve been ringing the alarm on for a long time.

“By replacing the presumption of liberty with preemptive legal intimidation, it creates a chilling effect, undermines the rule of law and flies in the face of basic human rights.”

British capital sees heightened security as right wing rally takes place at the same time as Nakba Day march.

Tens of thousands of people are marching through central London in two separate protests – one pro-Palestine demonstration a day after Nakba Day, and the other, a far-right rally staged by Tommy Robinson.

Police in the British capital deployed 4,000 officers, including reinforcements from ⁠outside the city, on Saturday and pledged “the most assertive possible use of our powers” in what they called their biggest public order operation in years.

Armoured vehicles, horses, dogs, drones and helicopters were also deployed to manage the separate protest marches, the UK Metropolitan Police said.

By 1200 GMT, shortly after both marches started, police said they had made 11 arrests for a range of offences. They had earlier forecast ⁠turnout of at least 80,000 – about 50,000 at Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” march, and 30,000 more expected to go to the Nakba Day rally.

Authorities had imposed various conditions on the two rallies over their routes and timings, in a bid to keep rival attendees apart.

Prosecutors were told to consider whether certain protest placards or chants may amount to offences and stir up aggression during the rallies.

“This is not about restricting free speech,” said the Crown Prosecution Service’s director, Stephen Parkinson. “It is about preventing hate crime and protecting the public, particularly at a time of heightened tensions.”

The police force, which estimates its operation will cost 4.5 million pounds ($6m), warned in a statement that it would adopt “a zero-tolerance approach”. That includes, for the first time, making organisers legally responsible for ensuring invited speakers do not break hate speech laws.

The British government earlier blocked 11 foreign nationals from entering the country for the “Unite the Kingdom” rally. Right-wing figures claiming to have been barred include Polish politician Dominik Tarczynski, Belgian politician Filip Dewinter, Colombian-American anti-Islam commentator Valentina Gomez and Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

On the eve of demonstrations, Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned: “Anyone who sets out to wreak havoc on our streets, to intimidate or threaten anyone … can expect to face the full force of the law.”

Starmer – facing intense pressure within his ruling Labour party to quit after far-right Reform UK scored huge wins in local elections last week – accused the organisers of Saturday’s far-right rally of “peddling hatred and division”.

Last September, far-right activist Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – drew about 110,000 people into central London for a similar rally proclaiming “national unity, free speech and Christian values”.

X owner Elon Musk addressed that event, which shocked many in the UK for its scale, directness, and clashes between participants and police, which injured dozens of officers.

Meanwhile, the Stand Up to Racism group has combined its antifascism march with the pro-Palestine event to mark Nakba Day, held annually on March 15 to commemorate the 1948 mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land during the establishment of the state of Israel.

The Met said live facial recognition would be used for the first time to police the protests.

PM Keir Starmer says the phrase ‘globalise the Intifada’ should be ‘completely off limits’.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says some pro-Palestine marches could be banned and people who use the phrase “globalise the Intifada” could be prosecuted.

In an interview broadcast by the BBC on Saturday, Starmer advocated for tighter language restrictions at pro-Palestine marches, adding that in some cases, rallies could be prohibited altogether.

“I’m a big defender of freedom of expression, peaceful protests,” he told the BBC. “But when there are chants like ‘globalise the Intifada’, that’s completely off limits.”

“Clearly, there should be tougher action in relation to that,” he added.

Discussions had been taking place with the police for some time about what further action could be taken, he added. Asked whether he sought to completely bar some rallies, Starmer said he thought that would be appropriate in some cases.

‘Likely to be arrested’

Starmer’s comments come after he earlier this week called the chant “globalise the Intifada” a case of “extreme racism” and said those who use it “should be prosecuted”.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley also told the BBC that people who use the phrase are “likely to be arrested”.

Supporters of the slogan say it reflects a call to expand the pro-Palestine movement into a global campaign.

Starmer has come under pressure after a spate of anti-Semitic incidents, including this week, when two men were stabbed in the north London suburb of Golders Green, which is home to a large Jewish community.

A 45-year-old British national who was born in Somalia was remanded in custody when he made his first appearance in court on Friday, accused of attempted murder.

Starmer visited the scene of the attacks and a Jewish volunteer ambulance service on Thursday and was booed by some locals, who accused him of not doing enough to protect them. They also denounced pro-Palestinian activists holding marches in British cities.

On Thursday, the UK increased its security alert level to “severe” – the second highest – in part because of the attack in Golders Green.

British authorities have repeatedly faced criticism for cracking down on pro-Palestine activism during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Last month, British police arrested more than 500 people during a mass vigil in central London to oppose the ban on campaign group Palestine Action.

“I think Britain has now descended into a non-democratic situation and I think that is very dangerous [for] free speech,” one demonstrator taking part in the vigil told Al Jazeera.

Video footage shared on social media shows two women being arrested at a pro-Palestine demonstration in Berlin. Participants waved Palestinian flags and chanted solidarity slogans amid a heavy police presence.

Three professors at Atlanta’s Emory University in the United States have filed a lawsuit over their arrests during a 2024 campus protest over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Their lawsuit on Thursday argued that the university broke its own free-speech policies when it called in police and state troopers to aggressively disband the protest, making 28 arrests.

“The judicial system would find that Emory failed to protect its students, to protect its staff, to protect the educational mission of the university,” said philosophy professor Noelle McAfee, one of the plaintiffs.

“So this isn’t just about people’s individual rights. It’s our educational mission to train people in free and critical inquiry, to be able to learn how to engage with others, to be fearless.”

Laura Diamond, a spokesperson for Emory, responded that the university believes “this lawsuit is without merit”.

“Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm,” Diamond said in a statement. “We regret this issue is being litigated, but we have confidence in the legal process.”

The suit is just one example of how the nationwide wave of protests from 2023 and 2024 continues to reverberate on elite campuses.

There have been multiple instances where students and faculty have filed lawsuits against universities, arguing they were discriminated against because of the protests.

But the Emory suit is unusual. McAfee and her fellow plaintiffs — English and Indigenous studies professor Emilio Del Valle-Escalante and economics professor Caroline Fohlin — all remain tenured faculty members. None were convicted of any charges.

The civil lawsuit in DeKalb County State Court demands that the private university repay money the three spent defending themselves against misdemeanour charges that were later dismissed, along with punitive damages.

McAfee said she’s suing her employer “to try to get them to be accountable and to change”.

All three say they were observers on April 25, 2024, when some students and others set up tents on the university’s main quad to protest the war. They say Emory broke its own policies by calling in Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers without seeking alternatives.

McAfee was charged with disorderly conduct after she said she yelled “Stop!” at an officer roughly arresting a protester. Del Valle-Escalante said he was trying to help an older woman when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Fohlin said that, when she protested against officers pinning a protester to the ground, she herself was thrown face-first to the ground and arrested, suffering a concussion and a spine injury. Fohlin was charged with misdemeanour battery of an officer.

Emory claimed that those arrested that day were outsiders who trespassed on school property. But 20 of the 28 people arrested were affiliated with the university.

The professors said that, after their arrests, they were targeted by threats and harassment, part of a pushback by conservatives who said universities were failing to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism and allowing lawlessness.

Nationwide, however, advocates say there is a “Palestine exception” in which universities are willing to curb pro-Palestine speech and protest. Palestine Legal, a legal aid group supporting such speech, said Tuesday that it received 300 percent more legal requests in 2025 than its annual average before 2023, mostly from college students and faculty.

McAfee served as president of the Emory University Senate after her arrest. The body makes policy recommendations and has helped draft the university’s open expression policy.

She said she asked then-President Gregory Fenves in fall 2024 why Emory police weren’t dropping the charges against her and others. McAfee said Fenves told her that he wanted “to see justice”.

The open expression policy was revised after 2024 to clearly prohibit tents, camping, the occupation of university buildings and demonstrations between midnight and 7am.

Whatever the policy, McAfee said students are afraid to protest at Emory, saying the university has turned its back on what Atlanta civil rights icon John Lewis called “good trouble”.

“Students know right now that any trouble is not going to be good trouble at Emory, that they could get arrested,” she said. “So students are afraid.”

Twelve elite British universities are accused of hiring a private security firm with military intelligence ties to track pro-Palestine student protests. Students were reportedly flagged through social media monitoring without their awareness, sparking debate over surveillance and free speech in UK higher education.

Learn more about the campus accountability mapping project.

In this episode: 

• Aaron Walawalkar (@AaronWala), Investigative Reporter, Liberty Investigations

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li and Sarí el-Khalili with Spencer Cline, Catherine Nouhan, Tuleen Barakat and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker and Noor Wazwaz. 

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Rick Rush mixed this episode. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhemm. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. 

Connect with us:

@AJEPodcasts on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.

In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.

The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.

Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.

“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.

“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”

Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.

The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.

Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Pressure campaigns

In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.

He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.

To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.

Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.

Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.

To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.

Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.

The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.

Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.

Legal victories

Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.

Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.

A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.

Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.

“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.

“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”

Release of Mahdieh Esfandiari comes a week after Iran released two French citizens held on espionage charges.

Iranian national Mahdieh Esfandiari has returned home after being held in France for more than a year as part of what appears to be an exchange of detainees between the countries.

Iran’s state television reported on Wednesday that the “rights activist”, sentenced to one year in prison after making online comments supportive of Palestine and the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that prompted the genocidal war on Gaza, had returned to Iran.

The University of Lyon graduate, who had been living in France since 2018, where she worked as a translator, was arrested in February last year on charges of promoting “terrorism”, and released on bail in October.

“I think it’s clear for everyone that there is no freedom of speech, at least not in France where I was. The court’s ruling was very unjust,” Esfandiari told state television in a Wednesday broadcast.

Esfandiari’s release comes a week after French citizens Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, arrived in France after being held for more than three years in Iran.

Kohler and Paris were arrested by Iranian authorities in May 2022 but were freed in November last year, after more than three years in prison on espionage charges that their families vehemently deny.

They were taken by French diplomats to France’s mission in Tehran, where they lived under house arrest until their full release on April 7. Upon their release, they were driven from Iran to neighbouring Azerbaijan before taking a flight to Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron’s office said their release was the outcome of a “long-term effort”, but talks accelerated in recent weeks due to pressure from the US-Israel war on Iran, giving a sense of urgency to the situation.

While an exchange was not explicitly acknowledged by France, Iran’s state-run agency IRNA had previously said Tehran reached an agreement with Paris for the release of the French citizens in exchange for Esfandiari.