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LONDON: Six activists on Thursday denied terror charges for allegedly supporting the banned group Palestine Action and were freed on bail by a UK court.
The six, aged between 26 to 62, risk up to 14 years in prison for allegedly supporting the group which was banned in July by the UK government after vandalism at a Royal Air Force base.
They were arrested on Tuesday and Wednesday and charged “with various offenses of encouraging support for a proscribed terrorist organization,” the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.
The charges result from 13 online meetings they attended to prepare for several protests over the summer.
During an online press conference Wednesday, representatives of the group, Defend Our Juries, to which the arrested individuals belonged, confirmed demonstrations would go ahead Saturday in London, Derry in Northern Ireland, and Edinburgh in Scotland.
British police have made hundreds of arrests at recent protests in support of Palestine Action.
British film director Ken Loach, who attended the event, called the ban on Palestine Action “absurd” and accused the government of being complicit in Israel’s “incredible crimes” in Gaza.
“This level of political repression is not what we expect in a democracy — it’s the kind of tactic typically associated with authoritarian regimes around the world,” a spokesperson for Defend our Juries said in a statement earlier this week.
The group has vowed to press ahead with its demonstration on Saturday in Parliament Square, claiming 1,000 people had pledged to hold signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
More than 700 people who have held up such signs at previous protests over the last two months have been arrested under anti-terror laws for showing support for a proscribed organization.

STRASBOURG, France: The Council of Europe urged its 46 member states on Thursday not to outsource the processing of asylum seekers to third countries, saying these people risked being tortured or killed.
Several European nations have begun outsourcing the handling of asylum seekers to countries outside the European Union.
They include Italy, whose hard-right government opened migrant reception centers in Albania that have now morphed into repatriation outfits.
“Externalization policies might result in people being subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, collective expulsions and arbitrary detention or may put their lives in danger,” said the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty.
“Such policies might also hinder effective access to asylum and deprive individuals of legal remedies,” he said.
A new report by the council — Europe’s human rights watchdog — identifies three areas in which risks are “particularly acute.”
These are “external processing of asylum claims; external return procedures..; and the outsourcing of border control to other countries, some of which have a documented history of serious violations against people on the move.”
Last month, the EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of Italian judges who had ordered the repatriation to Italy of asylum seekers expelled to Albania by Giorgia Meloni’s government.
In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights, which is part of the Council of Europe, blocked the transfer of asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda.
Britain, which has since formally left the EU, has now set up an agreement with France that provides for asylum seekers to be sent back from the UK to France.
Four African countries — Eswatini, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda — have agreed to accept migrants expelled en masse from the United States by the administration of President Donald Trump.
El Salvador was the first Latin American country to accept migrants deported from the United States.