Exclusive: Palestine Action facing new rigged ‘terrorism’ trials

As the British state seeks to destroy Palestine Action, a new trial is underway in which a judge has threatened defendants with a ‘terrorism connection’ if they explain the motives behind their activism.

It is one of three such trials in which the government has muzzled defendants, blinded jurors and banned local media coverage to guarantee convictions.

The Grayzone can exclusively reveal that hearings have been underway in the trial of the so-called Teledyne Three. These three defendants damaged the clean room of a UK factory which produces parts for the F-35 aircraft which Israel has used to carry out an array of crimes against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip, and beyond. They are members of the direction action protest collective, Palestine Action, which the British state has designated as a “terrorist entity” in the face of international condemnation. 

The presiding judge in the Teledyne Three case, Driver, has imposed restrictions on the defense which threatens them with a “terrorism connection” if they attempt to explain the motives behind their actions.

The British media is currently forbidden from reporting on the trial or the draconian measures applied by the judge.   

The Teledyne Three case is one of three ongoing trials in which the British state is intensifying its assault on Palestine Action by muzzling defendants and blinding jurors. Stretching the definition of terrorism to the point of absurdity, and applying it as promiscuously as possible, forms the heart of the government’s strategy.

This February, the government’s relentless attempts to designate Palestine Action as a terrorism entity was found “unlawful”. However, the Home Office’s July 2025 designation of the protest group as a “terrorist entity” remains under final appeal. Meanwhile, separate ongoing court proceedings against PA actionists testify to a systematic campaign of dubious legal tactics to sentence defendants as terrorists, drastically increasing their penalties if found guilty.

As first revealed by The Grayzone, British authorities stacked the legal deck against a group of PA defendants known as the Filton Six. A judge imposed severe restrictions on what the defense could say, what the jury was allowed to hear, and which defenses the jurors were allowed to consider. The jury was not even able to know that the defendants could be sentenced as terrorists if found guilty of lesser criminal convictions. The entire case appeared engineered to guarantee convictions. 

In June, four were convicted, receiving jail sentences as “terrorists” of five to eight years.

Amnesty International slammed the railroading of the Filton Six as a “dangerous” attack on British protest rights. Yet the authorities were clearly emboldened, and are now attempting to pull the same stunt in three separate cases. 

On August 17, a trial of Palestine Action defendants known as the Teledyne 3 will begin. In October 2024, the activists managed to shut down a factory in northern England producing F-35 fighter jet parts. The site’s clean room, vital for building and repairing these components, which were used to carry out an array of atrocities against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip and Iran, was put out of action for a substantial period of time.

The British media has been banned from reporting on the pre-trial hearings.

In court, the presiding judge, Driver, imposed strict limits on which defenses the three activists could employ at trial. Whether the defendants plead innocent or guilty, if they attempt to explain their motivations for disrupting the Teledyne factory’s operations to the jury, they will be punished by having a “terrorism connection” applied to the case in sentencing. The judge and prosecution alike have described the trio’s actions as intended to “influence a government” – language central to the British government’s legal definition of “terrorism.”

According to hearing transcripts obtained by The Grayzone, the judge warned both defendants and the prosecution that the trio’s potential sentencing as terrorists was “not an issue” and “not part” of the case. Yet the judge has nonetheless forbidden the defendants from raising the issue at all, barred the jury from hearing about it, and blocked the media from reporting it. 

The prosecution is similarly prohibited from mentioning the case’s supposed “terrorism connection” without submitting a formal application for permission to the court beforehand. Thus the court has established a coercive Catch 22 that muzzles defendants and imposes blinders on the jury.

This July, a separate trial of PA activists who targeted the same Teledyne site was overseen by the same judge. Throughout the proceedings, the judge displayed overt contempt for the group and its activists, while attempting to limit their defense. In this case, the prosecution unsuccessfully attempted to introduce a “terrorism connection” in sentencing. However, the trial ended with the three defendants being convicted of criminal damage in the fairly trivial amount of £5,000 ($6,755).

An observer of the trial has informed The Grayzone that Judge Driver appeared “bored and irritated” when defense lawyers argued the accused should be free to explain the motive behind their direct action: preventing the factory from producing F-35 parts which would inevitably be used by Israel to carry out crimes far worse than petty vandalism. The judge summarily ruled against all their proposed legal defenses, admonishing defendants against telling the jury about their politics or morals, or about the flagrant illegality of Israel’s policy toward Gaza under international law. 

Meanwhile, prosecutors were allowed to slander the defendants as an “organized criminal operation” engaged in a “campaign of violence.” The precedents set by the Filton Six trial, and PA’s draconian proscription as a terrorist group, have opened the floodgates for a “terrorism connection” to be applied in many other cases of direct action aimed at obstructing Israeli crimes. 

In June, five Actionists were convicted of substantial criminal damage to a branch of Barclays Bank, which provides loans and investments to Israeli weapons manufacturers. Court filings indicate that the Crown Prosecution Service applied to add a “terrorism connected” designation only after the trial concluded. At no point during the two week trial were the defendants or jury aware that they were engaged in a terrorism trial. On August 21, a hearing will determine whether the terrorism designation will be applied. Two weeks later, the defendants are due to be sentenced.

The presiding judge in that case, Altham, previously made headlines due to his “manifestly excessive” punishment of three anti-fracking protestors, in September 2018. Charged with public nuisance for climbing atop a truck to block the delivery of equipment to a fracking site, those defendants received 18 months in prison. In their appeal of the sentence, the defendants pointed to Altham’s family ties to the oil industry as a blatant conflict of interest. They walked free after Britain’s Court of Appeal overturned their sentences. 

Despite international condemnation and court challenges, the draconian legal assault on Palestine Action continues to escalate. Thousands of average citizens, including elderly pensioners and Holocaust survivors, have been arrested simply for expressing public support for the group or opposing its ban. 

In their attack on the direct action group, authorities clearly aim to neutralize one of the most effective mechanism that British citizens have for obstructing the machinery of genocide which grinds away on their soil, with the protection of their government. In modern Britain, there’s no telling what forms of political activism will be categorized as “terrorism” next.