A jury at Woolwich Crown Court found Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani guilty of criminal damage after they smashed equipment at the Elbit Systems site on Aug. 6, 2024. The four are scheduled to be sentenced June 12.
The attack drew an intense police response and was one of the events that prompted the government to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. In a separate ruling, London’s High Court declared that designation unlawful, though it has kept the ban in effect pending an appeal.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer told the court the raid was “meticulously organized” to cause maximum damage and to gather information about the defense contractor. Head drove a van through the factory gates before the group, dressed in red jumpsuits, began destroying property. The confrontation escalated into a fight with security guards and police that left Sgt. Kate Evans with two blows to the back from a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. Corner was separately convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm for that assault.
The group has said its actions were aimed at disabling military equipment destined for use in Israel’s war in Gaza. “We wanted to dismantle drones and weaponry we believed would be used to kill people,” a Palestine Action statement said, according to the case summary.
Two other defendants, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, were acquitted of criminal damage. Tuesday’s verdicts followed an earlier trial in which the same six were acquitted of aggravated burglary but jurors could not reach a verdict on the criminal damage counts.
The convictions land amid persistent tension over the U.K. government’s treatment of pro-Palestinian activism. While the High Court found the group’s terrorist ban unlawful, the government’s appeal keeps the organization in a legally precarious status. The court has not yet set a date to hear the full appeal.