Despite the decision, the ban will remain in force pending the government’s appeal
The UK High Court ruled on Friday that the government’s decision to classify activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last summer was unlawful, marking a major victory for civil liberties campaigners.
The court found that then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to ban the group was disproportionate, raising questions about the arrests of almost three thousand people at solidarity protests. But Judge Victoria Sharp ruled that the ban remains in place, pending the government’s appeal.
Human rights activists had argued that the ban represented a gross exaggeration of government power, risked criminalizing political dissent, and set a far-reaching precedent for the use of anti-terrorism laws against protest movements.
The group’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, has launched a legal challenge against the British government’s decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws.
The decision follows one of the largest campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience in recent history, with 2,787 people – many of them retired or elderly – detained in protests across the country since July.
Most of these arrests were made for holding signs that read: “I am against genocide, I support Palestine Action”, at demonstrations, according to the organization Defend Our Juries – which has been instrumental in organizing the protests.
A Defend Our Juries spokesperson called for a meeting with the Home Secretary and the chief constable of London, urging them to “right the wrongs of the ban, including the unfair treatment of all those who were unlawfully detained and charged under the ban”.
Pro-Palestinian activists celebrate Friday’s decision in front of the High Court in London (Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Great personal risk
After Friday’s decision, the crowd that had gathered outside the High Court in London broke into applause and chants of “Free and free Palestine”, with some people in tears.
“Thousands of conscientious people saw that classifying a protest as terrorism was a move straight out of the dictator’s playbook. Together, we acted at great personal risk – inspired by each other’s courage. We helped make this ban unenforceable, saying “we don’t comply,” said the Defend Our Juries spokesperson.
The case followed a three-day judicial review in December, in which lawyers for the group’s co-founder argued that the ban was “an extraordinary and unlawful escalation against political dissent.”
Palestine Action is a UK-based group that aims to disrupt the operations of arms manufacturers linked to the Israeli government and its war in Gaza. It was founded by Ammori and climate activist Richard Barnard in 2020, when the group took its first action to shut down the UK operations of Elbit Systems – Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. The group’s main mission is to “end global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.”
Since its founding, Palestine Action has, among other actions, occupied, blocked, spray-painted and disrupted Israeli-French drone company UAV Tactical Systems and global weapons giant Leonardo. He cut and spray-painted a portrait of former Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour – whose 1917 statement expressed London’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in British-mandated Palestine – at Trinity College, Cambridge, and “kidnapped” two busts of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, from the University of Manchester.
However, it was the group’s action in late June 2025 at RAF Brize Norton airbase – where activists vandalized two Airbus Voyager refueling planes with paint and crowbars – that led to its ban.
The group was proscribed by the Ministry of the Interior as a terrorist group days after the air base raid, putting it on equal footing with organizations such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The measure drew condemnation from United Nations experts, human rights groups and politicians.
Government lawyers argued that proscribing the group was a necessary national security measure.
Friday’s ruling by the High Court follows one of the UK’s longest hunger strikes, the government’s decision not to award Elbit Systems UK a two billion pound sterling (around €2.5 billion) contract with the UK Ministry of Defense and the acquittal of activists accused of a robbery at an Elbit Systems UK factory in Bristol this month.
The decision focuses attention on the issue at the heart of the Palestine Action debate: how Britain applies anti-terrorism laws to domestic protests and the limits of executive power.
CNN’s Mick Krever and Isobel Yeung contributed to this report
