Emergency Meeting: Harsh Sentencing of Gaza Protestors is clearly ‘Political'
Campaigning groups, including PSC, have condemned the ‘disproportionate' and ‘political' jail sentences being handed down to young people who took part in the mass demonstrations against Israel's attacks on Gaza last year.
In total, 119 people were arrested during, or in the months after, the protests outside the Israeli embassy in London in January 2009.
According to Joanna Gilmore, a researcher in the School of Law at Manchester University, who has been investigating the cases, this is the largest number of arrests for a demonstration since the Poll Tax riots of 1990.
Ms Gilmore told an emergency meeting called in the Houses of Parliament by PSC and others that the scale of the arrests was significant. She added that the majority of those arrested were young Muslim men, despite the mixed nature of the demonstrations, and that the majority of those being sentenced were aged between 16 and 19. The youngest person to be arrested was just 12-years-old.
Many of the young people had been under surveillance by the police in the months following the protests, and were arrested in dawn raids on their homes up to a year later. Some told Ms Gilmore that their family members were handcuffed and put in a separate room during the arrests.
Others were questioned at police stations without a lawyer present, after being told by officers that they would face long delays if they waited for a solicitor to arrive.
The emergency meeting, on Tuesday (2 March), heard that 26 of those arrested had been sentenced in February 2010, and 22 had been jailed. Most had been taking part in their first demonstration. Sentences ranged from 12 months to two-and-a-half years, for offences as minor as throwing placards.
A 19-year-old, aspiring to be a dentist, was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing a bottle in the direction of the Israeli embassy.
Two women, aged 18 and 19, with no previous convictions, were jailed for 15 months, with one being moved from a London prison to Bristol, two hundred miles from her family.
‘They're both finding prison extremely difficult,' said Ms Gilmore.
Judge Denniss, sentencing at Isleworth Crown Court, Middlesex, accepted that many of the defendants were of good character and active in their communities, but stated that he wanted to ‘send a message of deterrent to the rest of the community'.
Bruce Kent, vice-president of CND, told the meeting that this was unacceptable and that sentencing should be proportionate to the offence, which these sentences blatantly weren't. A more appropriate response would have been to hand down suspended sentences or community service orders.
MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, said the sentencing was clearly political. It reflected the sentencing which followed the Bradford disturbances of 2001, when Muslim men were given prison terms upwards of six years, for offences including throwing stones.
Mohammed Kozbar, of the British Muslim Initiative, added that it was clear the latest sentencing was designed to deter the Muslim community from exercising its democratic right to protest. Ben Soffa, PSC campaigns officer, noted the significance of the heavy prison terms for future demonstrations, particularly those in support of Palestine.
Ms Gilmore said all of those brought before the court had told her they would not take part in any future demonstrations.
Reference was also made to the violence employed by the police during the protests which Andrew Murray, chair of Stop the War, said was the most brutal he had ever witnessed at a demonstration. Nearly 40 complaints were made about police behaviour following the protests, none of which were investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The meeting criticised the court's failure to take into account, during sentencing, any evidence of police brutality, including beating protesters and using the controversial ‘kettling' technique.
*The case of Khalid Afeneh, accused of violent disorder and allegedly throwing a sand bag at police, causing an officer's eardrum to perforate, was thrown out of court. Khalid entered a not guilty plea at his hearings, and information obtained from the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the injury he allegedly caused did not happen.
Sentencing continues this Friday (5 March) at Isleworth Crown Court.
Tuesday's meeting was organised by PSC, Stop the War and the British Muslim Initiative, and supported by CND
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