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Britain’s High Court ruled on Friday that the government’s decision to ban the activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last summer was unlawful, in a major victory for civil liberties campaigners.
The court found then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to ban the group was disproportionate, raising questions about the arrests of around 3,000 people at solidarity protests. But Judge Victoria Sharp ruled that the ban would remain in place pending an appeal by the government.
Human rights activists had argued that the ban was a broad overreach of government power, risked criminalizing political dissent, and set a broader precedent for the use of anti-terrorism laws against protests.
The group’s co-founder Huda Anmoli had launched a legal challenge to the UK government’s decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws.
The ruling follows one of the largest non-violent civil disobedience movements in recent history, with 2,787 people, many of them pensioners and elderly people, arrested in protests across the country since July.
Defend Our Juries, which helps organize the protests, said most of the arrests were for holding signs at demonstrations that read: “I oppose genocide and support Palestinian action.”
A spokesperson for Protect Our Juries called for a meeting with the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable of London’s Police to “rectify the wrongs of the ban, including the unfair treatment of all those wrongfully arrested and prosecuted under the ban”.
Friday’s verdict prompted cheers and chants of “Free Palestine” from the crowd outside London’s High Court, with some crying.
“Thousands of people of conscience saw labeling protests as terrorism as something straight out of a dictator’s playbook. Inspired by each other’s courage, we took action together at great personal risk. We said, ‘We will not comply,’ and helped make this ban unenforceable,” a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said.
The case went through a three-day judicial review in December, with lawyers for the group’s co-founders arguing that the ban was an “unusual and unlawful escalation of political dissent.”
Palestine Action is a UK-based organization that aims to disrupt the activities of the Israeli government and weapons manufacturers involved in the Gaza war. The group was founded in 2020 by Mr Anmoly and climate activist Richard Barnard, and its first action was to close down the UK operations of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. The organization’s main mission is to “end Israel’s global participation in the genocide and apartheid regime.”
Since its founding, Palestine Action has occupied, blockaded, spray-painted and disrupted Israeli and French drone company UAV Tactical Systems and global arms giant Leonardo. They cut out and spray-painted a portrait of former Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour (whose 1917 declaration expressed London’s support for establishing a “national homeland for the Jewish people” in British Mandate Palestine) at Trinity College, Cambridge, and “abducted” two busts of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, from Manchester University.
But what led to the ban was the group’s actions in late June 2025, when activists destroyed two Airbus Voyager planes with paint and crowbars while they were refueling at RAF Brize Norton.
The group was banned as a terrorist group by the Interior Ministry days after the air base invasion, putting it on a par with organizations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. The move drew condemnation from UN experts, human rights groups and politicians.
Government lawyers argued that banning the group was a necessary national security measure.
Friday’s High Court ruling follows one of Britain’s longest hunger strikes, the government’s decision not to award a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) British Defense Ministry contract to Elbit Systems UK, and the acquittal of activists charged with breaking into Elbit Systems UK’s factory in Bristol this month.
The judgment focuses on an issue at the heart of the Palestinian Action debate: how Britain applies anti-terrorism laws to domestic protests and the limits of executive power.
CNN’s Mick Krever and Isobel Yeung contributed reporting.
