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The youngest of six Palestine Action activists cleared of aggravated burglary over a break-in at an Israeli defence firm’s UK site has said the verdicts were a vindication of their cause.
After 18 months in jail, Fatema Rajwani, 21, was released on bail last Wednesday, having also been acquitted by a jury at Woolwich crown court of violent disorder in relation to the raid on the Elbit Systems factory in Filton, near Bristol, on 6 August 2024.
Rajwani, a film and media studies student, who turned 20 the day before the Filton action, told the jurors: “I had damaged drones, which is what I went in to do.”
Commenting on video footage, she said in court: “That is me dismantling a quadcopter drone with a crowbar.”
Rajwani, who said she still found being out of prison overwhelming, told the Guardian: “The verdicts are a reflection of the reality that the first chance that the public had to decide what happened to us, they vindicated us. It is plain to see that the British public do not want their citizens to be scapegoated for this Labour government’s political aims, they do not want to be criminalised for supporting a people’s inalienable right to freedom, to dignity, and to self-determination.
The prosecution told the court that security guards were whipped and sworn at and the defendants were armed with sledgehammers “to be used if necessary to threaten and damage people”. Rajwani’s co-defendant Samuel Corner, 23, the only one of the six denied bail on Wednesday, was accused of inflicted grievous bodily harm (GBH) on police sergeant Kate Evans by striking her on the back with a sledgehammer but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the charge.
The defence case was that any violence by those on trial was unplanned, that security guards had used excessive force and that missing CCTV footage meant that there was not a complete picture of what happened.
Rajwani said: “The jury found us not guilty [of aggravated burglary] because, unlike the rightwing critics and politicians who are commenting based on highly edited and cherrypicked footage, which cuts out so much context in order to fit the very specific narrative of violence, the jury saw all the evidence in the case.
“Aggravated burglary is a charge based on the intention to commit harm to another and when we entered that factory, it was to do all that we could to stop extreme harm and violence continuing at the hands of the Israeli regime and their British accomplices. On seeing all the evidence in the case it was clear to them [the jurors] that our only intention was to dismantle weapons being used in a genocide.”
None of the six defendants were convicted of an offence but the jury failed to reach a verdict for charges of criminal damage against any of the six defendants, nor on violent disorder charges in relation to three of Rajwani’s co-defendants along with Corner’s GBH charge.
On Saturday, the Crown Prosecution Service said it would be seeking a retrial, a prospect that Rajwani said was “difficult” but paled in comparison with what she had already been through. “The last 18 months have been traumatic. I am still living the nightmare in parts, I can’t hear a police siren without being transported back to the terrorism suite, I can’t hear keys jangling without being terrified I’ll be locked up. I am still scared of being yelled at for hugging my mother for too long.”
For the time being, she is doing her best to enjoy being out of prison. “I’ve been doing all the things I haven’t been able to since I was incarcerated, eating real food, using metal cutlery, eating on ceramic plates, taking the bus and hugging the people I love for more than the prison allocated five-second embrace,” she said.
“I opened the front door to my house, with my own key. We got home that first night and my uncle had brought us all a big bag of takeout and we had chicken jalfrezi and crispy chicken, real spicy food. Aside from that, I’m just enjoying the fresh air and the ability to walk in a straight line, just because of how much our movement was analysed, punished and restricted within prison walls.”
