As we reported last month, the jury in the retrial of the Filton 6 gave a bizarre verdict, singling out Jordan Devlin and Zoe Rogers for acquittals, while finding the other four guilty of criminal damage. Bizarre, because all six admitted they had committed damage, and gave similar reasons for doing so.
It seems most likely that the jury felt under pressure from the judge, Mr Justice Johnson, to reach verdicts, and that some horse-trading was going on among jurors which led to the otherwise inexplicable division.
What makes the situation all the worse, is that jurors may have been under the impression that while Jordan and Zoe would go free, because of time already served (20 months on remand) the other four would be released soon after, with ‘criminal damage’ likely to attract a sentence of only four or five years, meaning up to two years to serve.
But on Friday 12th June, after refusing to recuse himself on Monday when asked to do so by defence lawyers pointing to his biased rulings in court, Mr Justice Johnson will add a ‘terrorist connection” to the sentencing, which could add many years (without parole) to their incarceration, followed by decades on draconian licence conditions and a forever label on their records as “terrorists”.
The jurors were never told about this, and reporting restrictions throughout the trials prevented the media from exposing it either (although foreign outlets did manage to spread the word).
A large protest is expected at Woolwich Crown Court for the sentencing hearing on Friday, and Zoe, Jordan and friends and family of the defendants are calling for anyone who cares about democracy and the right to protest to come and show their disgust at this dangerous further step into authoritarian repression.
Watch mother Sukaina Rajwani make her plea for peace:
