Mick Napier charged with ‘support for proscribed organization’ under Terrorism Act as Establishment attempt to suppress solidarity with Palestine continues
Palestine Solidarity Activist Mick Napier, a founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been charged under anti-terror legislation after giving a speech in Glasgow in which he said:
I agree with the Palestinian right to resist by means that they choose.
Napier has been charged under the Terrorism Act with supporting a ‘proscribed organisation’. He also thanked Hamas for ‘breaking out of the Gaza concentration camp’. He was arrested at the demo, shortly afterward. According to Electronic Intifada, police officers told Napier that he was being arrested for ‘religiously aggravated’ offences.
Hamas was made a proscribed organisation by the UK government on the basis of its rocket attacks on Israel – but is not listed as a terror group by the United Nations and the UN defeated an attempted 2020 US resolution condemning the group for its rocket attacks. It is widely recognised that the right to resist occupation is protected under international law as part of the human right of self-determination, including the use of force consistent with the UN charter. It appears the UK Establishment is applying the Terrorism Act in a way inconsistent with international law.
Napier is not the only human rights advocate targeted by police. As Skwawkbox exclusively reported, Brighton-based Tony Greenstein was arrested earlier this week and suffered the confiscation of his electronics, for a single tweet, after what is believed to have been a complaint from a right-wing pro-Israel group. He was released without charge on police bail, but under a series of draconian bail conditions that attack his freedom of speech as well as his privacy.
Mick Napier was released on bail under similarly draconian conditions banning him from attending any protest in Scotland and from entering the centre of Glasgow. He pleaded not guilty to all five charges and is due to appear in court 9 January. PSC Scotland – a separate organisation from the English PSC – has said it will give him full support.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Mick Napier was stating a fact which is in compliance with international law. For our police to not be aware of this fact is disgraceful and an indication of just how severe Zionist influence and pressure has poluted our democracy.
Quite. In how adherents to and supporters of an ideology put its features and criteria into practical effect in everyday affairs there are little, if any, ways or means to distinguish Zionism from Fascism.
There is no room in any serious democratic system for either. Both are the antithesis not only of democracy but also of civilised humanity and need to be totally expunged from any aspiring civilised and democratic society if that society is to survive.
ABSOLUTELY Jack. ‘National law’ versus ‘International law’ (wiki:“International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes norms for states across a broad range of domains, including war and diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights. International law differs from state-based domestic legal systems in primarily, though not exclusively, applicable to states, rather than to individuals….”)
As I said on the previous story (https://skwawkbox.org/2023/12/22/exclusive-police-try-to-gag-greenstein-invade-privacy-through-bail-conditions/ ), “Proscription is the issue here. ‘Liberal’ democracies should not be comfortable forbidding their citizens freedom of thought (of course their use will increase under Sir show-me-your-papers, once he’s PM….”
MANY people (myself included) would describe Hamas as “freedom fighters”. For myself, I’d never endorse any death or destruction that Hamas may have affected, but I’d still recognise their right to exist as freedom fighters. Of course, I’d regret and accuse Israel that they felt the needto resort to acts of violence to publicise the horrendous treatment of Palestinians by Israel’s occupying forces.
Proscription is anti-democratic.
Supporting Irish independence in the 1970s and ’80s did not mean my father could be labelled a “terrorist” and be imprisoned as such or charged by the state for paramilitary activities. They’d have had to prove he was an IRA-bomber and evidence that he placed bombs that killed innocents, just as I hope Tony Greenstein, Mick Napier, et al will insist re this.
Have you forgotten about internment in NI?
Hamas were proscribed over 20yrs ago under the 2000 Terrorism Act, way back when Robin Cook was Foreign Sec.
Interment of suspected bombers, not of supporters of Irish Independence as a concept. I support a two-state solution to Palestinian occupation, but not the mass-murder of Israelis or Palestinians.
Of course the New Labour Terrorism Act (2000) proscribed Hamas. It was acting under-orders from the US, which, in turn, was preparing its 9/11 pretext for a geopolitical ‘war on terrorism’ and the chain of events starting with the Blair-Bush invasion of Iraq. Join the dots SteveH.
🥱