tactics

London, United Kingdom – Civil rights groups and Palestine solidarity campaigners are accusing the United Kingdom of “intimidation tactics” after two young pro-Palestinian activists were recently arrested while on bail.

On Monday, 21-year-old Qesser Zuhrah was detained after sharing a social media post calling on people to take “direct action”.

Masked officers handcuffed Zuhrah at her home in Watford at dawn. Just a month ago, she was released on bail following 15 months in prison awaiting trial, during which she participated in a lengthy hunger strike.

Four days earlier, on Thursday, plainclothes police officers in south London also arrested Audrey Corno, 23, accusing her of tampering with her electronic tag in breach of bail conditions – a charge she denies.

“They just grabbed me,” Corno told Al Jazeera. “I broke down into tears. This was a complete shock and very re-traumatising.”

She was told that a month earlier, her tag had been offline for 20 minutes.

The police surprised her as they emerged from “an undercover car” that was parked “right outside my home address”, Corno said.

“I don’t know how long they had been waiting there for. I was just back from a walk with my friends,” she said. “I would have no idea how to tamper with my tag for it to stop working and then work again.”

Before their latest arrests, both Zuhrah and Corno were imprisoned over their alleged participation in separate raids on military hardware manufacturers in 2024 that were claimed by Palestine Action, the direct action group whose stated mission is to target companies associated with the Israeli war machine.

Although the High Court ruled in February that the UK’s ban on Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation was unlawful, it is still illegal to show support for the group as the government prepares for an appeal due to take place later this month.

‘Charges in connection with social media post’

Counterterrorism police on Monday said that Zuhrah’s latest charge was “encouraging or assisting” the commission of an offence, “namely criminal damage”.

“The charges are in connection with posts made on social media,” the force said.

Zuhrah was granted bail again on Tuesday. She is due to appear in court on April 17.

She is a member of the so-called “Filton 24” collective, accused of breaking into a weapons factory in Filton, Bristol belonging to Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, in August 2024.

In Corno’s latest case, she was also released hours after being arrested for a second time.

Naila Ahmed, head of campaigns at CAGE International, said, Zuhrah’s “rearrest” is a continuation of the “active repression” targeting pro-Palestine activists across the UK.

“These laws were not misapplied or stretched beyond their intent – they were designed precisely to criminalise political speech and dissent, and that is exactly what they are doing here,” she said. “Terrorism legislation should be abolished in its entirety. It has never been a tool of public protection – it is and has always been a tool of political control, used to police those who challenge state power and silence those who speak out against injustice.”

Corno was previously accused of offences related to a June 2024 break-in at the Wooburn Green, Buckinghamshire facility of GRiD Defence Systems, which Palestine Action said supplies the Israeli military – a charge denied by the company.

She believes officials are using “intimidation tactics” because several charges against Palestine Action-linked activists have been dropped and dozens of them have been released on bail. All Filton 24 activists, for example, have been acquitted of aggravated burglary, and 23 have been freed from prison.

“This is a reaction to the acquittals and zero convictions in the Filton 24 case so far,” Corno said. “Take direct action” is not a contentious thing to say, she argued.

“Direct actionists who either are released on bail as they should be, or found not guilty, are still being heavily surveilled and heavily repressed by the state as a reminder, that although the public may find us not guilty, the state does.”

Last week, Zuhrah and other Filton 24 defendants spoke about alleged prison mistreatment and said they were planning to take legal action over medical neglect.

Campaigners supporting the group said, “We believe this is a coordinated campaign by the state to retaliate [after failing] to secure a single conviction at the first trial of the Filton 24. There is no doubt that this arrest was politically motivated, as it is unprecedented to charge people under the Serious Crime Act”.

The detentions come at a time of increasing friction between the police and Britain’s significant Palestine solidarity movement – and ahead of a march that could bring new tensions.

On Saturday, crowds of protesters are expected to gather again in London to demonstrate their support for Palestine Action as the genocide in Gaza continues. To date, thousands of peaceful protesters have been arrested for signs reading: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”.

While London’s Met Police refrained from detaining protesters following the High Court’s ruling, the force recently reversed that policy, meaning mass arrests are once again likely.

Meanwhile, a court is expected on Wednesday to rule in the case of Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition’s Chris Nineham, who are accused of breaching protest restrictions in January 2025.

Since Israel’s onslaught on Gaza began in October 2023, tens of thousands of Britons have rallied in support of Palestine.

According to YouGov polling, one in three Britons has “no sympathy at all for the Israeli side in the conflict” after Israel killed more than 72,000 people in two years and decimated the Gaza Strip.

The government, led by Labour leader Keir Starmer, has long been accused of cracking down on pro-Palestine solidarity because of a wave of arrests during demonstrations and due to its proscription of Palestine Action.

Human Rights Watch has said that its research found a “disproportionate targeting of certain groups, including climate change activists and Palestine protesters, undermining the right to protest freely and without fear of harassment”.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is expanding its powers to track, raid and deport migrants to “return hubs” in third countries in Africa and elsewhere, quietly adopting tactics of the Trump administration that have drawn public criticism across the 27-nation bloc.

The EU continues to tighten migration policies after right-wing parties took power in some countries in 2024. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the center-right European People’s Party coalition, has said that the new measures will prevent a repeat of the 2015 crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, when about 1 million people arrived to seek asylum.

“We have learned the lessons of the past. And today, we are better equipped,” Von der Leyen has said. The new policies, known as the Pact on Migration and Asylum, go into effect June 12.

Far-right parties in Europe have praised the deportation policies of President Trump and called for the EU to adopt a similar approach. Human rights groups warn that authorities are already illegally blocking migrants at EU borders and hollowing out their legal protections.

Italy provides a model

The EU already spends millions of dollars to deter migrants before they reach its shores, and has supported tens of thousands of Africans returning home, voluntarily or by force.

What’s envisioned now is an expansion of what Italy has created under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her “tough on migration” stance. It operates two migrant detention centers for rejected asylum seekers in Albania. One currently holds at least 90 migrants, said lawmaker Rachele Scarpa, who said that she found people confused and scared during a recent visit.

In addition, Meloni’s Cabinet has approved an anti-immigration package that would allow the navy to halt vessels in international waters for up to six months if they are deemed a threat to public order, return intercepted migrants to countries of origin or third countries and speed up the deportation of foreign nationals convicted of crimes.

An “informal group” of EU nations including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece are pursuing deportation center agreements, said Bernd Parusel, a researcher at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies.

Kenya is one country they are speaking with, said Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. Whether consciously or not, the plan is similar to Trump’s deals with nations like El Salvador to take in deported migrants, she said.

Other countries are exploring similar ideas. Sweden’s migration minister has said the conservative ruling coalition approves setting up hubs outside Europe, especially for Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers.

Competing views

During the recent Winter Olympics in Italy, protests erupted over the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the U.S. delegation. But others in Europe have praised ICE’s actions in Trump’s deportation campaign and called for setting up similar deportation-focused police units.

In 2024, Belgium passed a law allowing the EU border service Frontex to operate in the country, stoking fears among activists that it could join in on raids.

But Frontex’s mandate covers only borders, said spokesperson Chris Borowski, and the current role in voluntary or involuntary returns for the service includes “coordinating flights, helping with travel documents and making sure fundamental rights are respected throughout the process.”

The European Commission has declined requests to take a position on U.S. immigration policies.

In Britain, which left the EU several years ago, the center-left Labor Party government has made curbing unauthorized immigration a key focus.

In February, the Home Office said that almost 60,000 people had been deported since the government was elected in July 2024. It said 9,000 arrests were made of people working without permission in 2025, up by more than half from the year before.

Raids, surveillance and ‘pushbacks’

Under the principle of non-refoulement in EU and international law, a person can’t be returned to a country where they would face persecution.

But European immigration enforcement tactics include so-called pushbacks, where people trying to cross into the EU are forced back across a border without access to asylum procedures.

Authorities in Europe carry out an average of 221 pushbacks a day, according to a February report by a group of humanitarian organizations. More than 80,000 pushbacks were recorded in 2025, the report said, mostly in Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia.

“Men, women and children — including individuals in critical medical condition — are routinely subjected to beatings, attacks by police dogs, forced stripping, forced river crossings and theft of personal belongings,” according to the report.

European agents are brutalizing migrants just like in the U.S., said Flor Didden, migration policy expert at the Belgian human rights group 11.11.11. Some, like in Greece, even wear masks, as ICE agents typically do.

“The images are shocking and the outrage is justified,” he said of the U.S. “But where is that same moral clarity when European border authorities abuse, rob and let people die?”

Weakening of migrant protections seen

The groups also have recorded an expansion of surveillance technology like drones, thermal cameras and satellites to monitor people on the move.

Other human rights groups warn of a weakening of legal protections.

The EU’s new migration regulations allow for more police raids in private homes and public spaces and more use of surveillance and racial profiling, said a letter to EU institutions in February from 88 nonprofit groups including the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.

“We cannot be outraged by ICE in the United States while also supporting these practices in Europe,” said the platform’s director, Michele LeVoy.

Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU migration advocate for Amnesty International, said Europe retains more protections for vulnerable migrants than the United States does but shares much of the political momentum toward harsher policies.

“There’s a level of institutions’ and courts’ independence and human rights compliance in Europe that you can’t disregard,” she said. “But the fundamental political impulse is the same, and I worry that the human consequences will be the same.”

McNeil and Zampano write for the Associated Press and reported from Brussels and Rome, respectively. AP writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Jill Lawless in London, Paolo Santalucia in Rome, Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.