\n<\/p>\n
A legal challenge to the ban on Palestine Action can go ahead next month after the court of appeal rejected the Home Office\u2019s attempt to block the case.<\/p>\n
In a blow to the government, on Friday, three judges, led by the lady chief justice, Sue Carr, upheld Mr Justice Chamberlain\u2019s decision to grant the Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori a judicial review of the group\u2019s proscription under the Terrorism Act.<\/p>\n
The ban, the first on a direct action group, came into effect on 5 July, categorising it alongside the likes of Islamic State and National Action. Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for allegedly supporting Palestine Action, most for holding signs reading: \u201cI oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as dismissing the Home Office\u2019s appeal, Carr said the court of appeal was granting two further grounds on which to challenge the legality of the ban, in addition to the two already granted by Chamberlain.<\/p>\n
Ammori said: \u201cThe court of appeal has rightly rejected [the former home secretary] Yvette Cooper\u2019s attempt to block a legal review of her absurdly authoritarian ban \u2013 while granting us additional grounds on which to challenge it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a landmark victory: not only against one of the most extreme attacks on civil liberties in recent British history, but for the fundamental principle that government ministers can and must be held accountable when they act unlawfully.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u200bgovernment\u2019s effort to avoid judicial scrutiny of its blatantly anti-democratic proscription \u2013 branding a protest group as \u2018terrorists\u2019 for the first time in British history \u2013 has backfired spectacularly, and we now head into the \u200bjudicial review in \u200bNovember with an even stronger legal footing.\u200b\u201d<\/p>\n
The Home Office argued at last month\u2019s appeal hearing that parliament had specified the route to challenge proscription, which was to apply to the home secretary, who has 90 days to make a decision, and then, if necessary, appeal to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC). It described judicial review as \u201ca remedy of last resort\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Carr and her fellow judges said the mechanism designated by parliament was intended to bring proscription of a group to an end rather than to challenge the lawfulness of the initial decision to ban it.<\/p>\n
Echoing Chamberlain\u2019s concerns about the position of those who have been arrested since the ban, Carr said in her written judgment that the process of appealing to POAC \u201cdoes not provide for the removal of the consequences, including criminal convictions, where the [proscription] order was unlawful from its inception\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe consider that the fact that judicial review would be a more expeditious means of challenging the order, given the public importance of the issues raised, and, in particular, the fact that persons were facing convictions for acting in ways made criminal as a consequence of the order, justified using judicial review rather than the process of applying for an order to remove Palestine Action from the list of proscribed organisations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is merit in ensuring that there is a swift method of authoritatively determining whether the order, and the proscription of Palestine Action, was lawful or unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chamberlain had granted Ammori permission for judicial review on the basis that it was reasonably arguable that the proscription order amounted to a disproportionate interference with the rights to freedom of speech and protest. The second ground he deemed arguable was that Cooper had breached a duty to consult by not consulting Palestine Action before proscribing it.<\/p>\n
The further grounds that the court of appeal said could be argued at judicial review were whether the home secretary failed to have regard to domestic public law principles and whether she applied her own policy.<\/p>\n
On the latter point, Ammori\u2019s lawyers had argued at appeal that the home secretary failed to \u201cadequately assess the proportionality of the proscription\u201d. Documents released during the legal proceedings showed that, on the home secretary\u2019s assessment, only three of the Palestine Action\u2019s 385 actions would meet the statutory definition of terrorism.<\/p>\n
A Home Office spokesperson said\u200b it would consider the implications of the court of appeal ruling, adding: \u201cPalestine Action has conducted an escalating campaign. This has involved sustained criminal damage, including to Britain\u2019s national security infrastructure, as well as intimidation, alleged violence and serious injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cPalestine Action remain a proscribed group and those who support them will face the full force of the law. Everyone should remember: supporting Palestine and supporting a proscribed terrorist group are not the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The high court hearing is scheduled for three days beginning on 25 November. It is the first time that an organisation banned under anti-terrorism law has been granted a court trial to challenge proscription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A legal challenge to the ban on Palestine Action can go ahead next month after the court of appeal rejected the Home Office\u2019s attempt to block the case. In a blow to the government, on Friday, three judges, led by the lady chief justice, Sue Carr, upheld Mr Justice Chamberlain\u2019s decision to grant the Palestine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[919,505,163,662,160,324,1240,666],"class_list":{"0":"post-28726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-ahead","10":"tag-ban","11":"tag-challenge","12":"tag-court","13":"tag-legal","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-rules"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}