CPS consulted Israel over prosecution of Palestine Action activists jailed for over a year before trial

Email sharing CPS contact info with deputy ambassador shows Israel deeply embedded in prosecution process as Starmer regime wages war on anti-genocide speech and protest

The Starmer regime consulted with representatives of Israel over the prosecution of anti-genocide activists who took direct action against an Israeli arms factory in the UK – and are being held in jail for fourteen months or more before trial.

The likelihood of undue influence of a foreign power that has deliberately killed British aid workers in Gaza has been exposed by a Freedom of Information Act response from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which, although almost entirely blacked out, confirmed that the CPS shared contact details of prosecutors and counter-terror police last year with the Israeli embassy during its decision whether to prosecute ten of the ‘Filton 18’ activists who mounted the protest the Elbit weapons factory in Filton, Bristol.

An email sent 9 September last year by the office of the Attorney General (AGO), who runs the CPS, to deputy Israeli ambassador Daniela Grudsky Ekstein was headed “CPS/SO15 contact details” (Crown Prosecution Service/Met counter-terrorism unit).

In August, ten Palestine Action activists had been arrested after a protest at the Elbit factory, with eight more arrested three months later. Following the pattern used by the Starmer regime since he got into Downing Street, the state misused anti-terror laws to arrest, deny access to lawyers and seize the electronic devices of those detained or arrested – and ultimately to persuade a judge to deny them bail until their trial, even though they are being charged with criminal damage and not under the Terrorism Act.

The court also set a long trial date of November this year, meaning that the eighteen will have been in jail for up to fourteen months before the trial even begins – apparently a tactic Starmer is using to punish and deter protest even if protesters are ultimately acquitted or the case is dropped just before trial, as many have been.

The email sent by Nicola Smith, head of international law and national security at the AGO, was sent eleven days after she and AGO director general Douglas Wilson met with Grudsky Ekstein, after the AGO had previously declined meetings in 2023 with Israeli embassy officials ‘to preserve operational independence’. With ardent Zionist and instinctive police-stater Keir Starmer as PM, this position had clearly changed.

Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said the link between the meeting and ensuing email, and the CPS’s decisions is clear:

It seems apparent that the Attorney General’s Office has facilitated foreign interference in this case and potentially other ongoing criminal cases.

Since last year’s general election, the Starmer regime has been engaged in a constantly-escalating war against journalists, protesters and academics who expose and oppose Israel’s genocide and starvation blockade in Gaza, which have killed more than 200,000 people so far and are starving almost two million.

The United Nations has condemned Starmer’s war on free speech about Gaza and Israel, but the government has proceeded regardless. An email with contact details seems to be a clue why.

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