WEEK 4 (Defendants take the stand)
[Previous coverage – Week 1 and Week 2 and Week 3]
DAY 12 OF THE TRIAL – MONDAY 8th DECEMBER
Second defendant Samuel Corner to give evidence
Due to a jury member’s commitment this morning, the plan was to arrange an early lunch for jurors and defendants in order to sit at 12.30 for a long afternoon. However, the prison service did not supply lunch to the defendants, so Mr Corner had to begin his defence evidence without eating. We also heard that he had not been given essential medication this morning.
The judge agreed to arrange a short break for defendants to eat in the early afternoon.
Once the jury was in place, Judge Johnson began by giving a little background about the ability of the next defendant to give evidence. He told the jury that Mr Corner has been diagnosed with an autistic spectrum condition and ADHD – this may affect his evidence, causing him to take questions very literally, and making him appear unengaged or unemotional. He may need to move and fidget. None of this must be held against him in assessing the evidence.
Mr. Corner took his oath, and was asked how he’d prefer to be addressed. ‘Sam’ was his response.
Mr. Wainwright asked first for an overview of the intention of the action, and Sam said they had wanted to destroy weapons that were going to go to kill people in Gaza. He said that violence towards people was never part of the plan and would not assist the cause. The ‘weapons’ (as alleged by the prosecution) that were taken in to the site, were actually tools to damage property. Sam said he swung a sledgehammer towards someone in order to try and protect Ms Kamio who was screaming loudly. Sam confirmed that he had no previous convictions and had never even been in a fight.
Mr. Wainwright took Sam through his earlier life. He was raised in Devon, living with his mother, father and younger brother, and went to a specialist Maths school in Exeter. He represented Britain in an International Linguistics Olympiad (ILO) competition in 2019 in South Korea. He went to Worcester College, Oxford, and began a course in mathematics and philosophy, and carried on volunteering at the ILO, becoming a team leader mentoring the Swedish team. He restarted a linguistics degree which ended in the summer of 2024, and was planning to work for a year before beginning a Masters degree (which would have started this September). The barrister asked how linguistics related to public speaking/communication, and Sam said that wasn’t so much the area he was interested in.
Asked about his strengths, Sam said he was good at assimilating abstract information and recognising patterns. The regular consistent rules of maths or linguistics were where his skills lay. His memory is good in situations where input is repeated, but new skills or fast-changing situations are more problematic, so he did not deal well with time pressure. In social situations, Sam finds himself quite awkward and not confident over social skills and politeness. Mr Wainwright asked why he worried about social situations, and Sam said he worried about hurting people’s feelings if he didn’t get things right.
The barrister asked Sam about prison. Sam confirmed he’s been moved several times while on remand for more than a year, and always found it hard to deal with the changes – it’s always difficult trying to ask prison officers for things in each new situation, when routines alter so dramatically.
Mr. Wainwright asked about Sam’s interest in protests and activism, and he told the court he had been involved with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign national marches and joined a Youth Demand march in April this year. He also joined a pro-Palestine encampment at university while studying for his exams, helping with welcome tours, postering, and he’d sometimes stay there to keep numbers up, and help with anything generally.
He’d heard about Palestine Action before 2024, but Sam’s first contact was through people who had been involved, and from watching their social media. The encampment would hold vigils for people killed in Gaza, and Sam was increasingly aware of what was going on there. It was affecting him a lot, making him depressed, with so little that people could apparently do about it. That’s what made him think about getting involved with Palestine Action to actually do something about it. Mr Wainwright asked whether Sam was willing to cause physical harm to another person as something he could do. Sam responded ‘no’.
Turning to the agreed facts, Sam’s cell phone geographic location linked him to the June training session in north London, and Sam confirmed he was likely at that event, having received an invitation to various events in a group chat he was in. He said he hadn’t met his co-defendants before, and couldn’t remember whether they were all there. He described the event – it began with a broad outline of the methods and philosophy of Palestine Action. He didn’t remember seeing slides (something Ms Head had described) but agreed the content was broadly similar. He learned that Elbit was Israel’s main arms manufacturer and produced weapons used in the genocide in Gaza.
Sam was asked if he signed up to anything that day, and he confirmed he was offered possible roles in low or high level, or covert or overt actions, and that he had expressed an interest in high level overt, which ended up being his role in the Filton action. He wanted to do as much as he could, he said, conscious that he had personally been benefiting from Israel’s arms trade through the University of Oxford’s financial ties. Because he wasn’t yet working, he felt he had less to risk in terms of getting arrested.
Mr. Wainwright asked whether he’d thought about future job and study issues, and Sam said his understanding was that it would still be possible to do either after this kind of action. He knew people who had been arrested and then gone on to study or work. He didn’t expect at all to be sent to prison for 16 months – the very worst case scenario would be a few months on remand and then getting bail.
After putting his name forward, at some point he was included in a group Signal chat suggesting a different action and then switched to this one. He would only see the ‘Signal’ name of people involved, probably a code name or nickname.
Mr. Wainwright refers to the PA action documents that mentioned a ‘need to know’ protocol, and Sam agreed that he had not been told details of the action at first, other than roughly where and when.
At this point, the judge called the first break of the afternoon – a little longer than planned to allow for some food for Mr. Corner.
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After the break , Mr. Wainwright returned to some ‘agreed facts’. On 4th August, Sam Corner travelled from his home to the AirBnB, and his phone number geo-location data was consistent with this journey, showing that he spent time most of the next day in Bristol.
Sam said he waited in the nearby churchyard as he was early, and sat watching birds and squirrels and chatted to a man connected to the church. Mr. Wainwright asked about how Sam deals with stress, and he said he takes long walks, and also sometimes meditates, which is something he did for a short while in the churchyard.
As people arrived at the AirBnB, Sam said there was little or no discussion of plans, but just a period of relaxing and introducing themselves, watching YouTube and chatting. The next day was when last-minute details were being finalised by the organisers (not the red team). Sam said it was all arranged on the usual ‘need to know’ basis, so the coverts had their own meeting separately. The red team were shown a planning document which he agreed seemed similar to the Crytpad in the jury bundle, via a laptop plugged into a TV screen. It was scrolled through, so some parts were skipped.
Mr Wainwright asked whether these were finalised plans, and Sam pointed out that it stated there would be nine overts and twenty coverts for instance, but at this point there were only six overts, so it wasn’t an accurate document. He also remembers being shown some recce video and stills in relation to the possible route in. Sam said the Cryptpad was aimed at the organisers and he never had a link to it directly himself.
The defence barrister took Sam to particular pages in the document, starting with asking if it was exactly what Sam had been shown at the AirBnB. He thought it was very similar. The stated aims were for “the coverts to cause distraction while assisting overts to advance towards entry points”. Sam agreed that was what he understood the coverts’ role to be, being a hassle to deal with, creating a barrier, and using smoke flares to conceal and confuse. He said there was no plan to use violence in any way.
Later in the document, an equipment list included BB guns. Sam didn’t recall seeing it, or ever discussing it. There was no reference to axes in the list, and Sam confirmed that there had been no mention of anyone having these at any point. The number of participants mentioned in that list was also inaccurate compared to what actually happened. About the discussion on contingencies, Sam said there were discussions, but he wasn’t sure to what extent it tallied with the doc. He said everyone was present, and there was again no suggestion of violence.
Asked about the reference to GoPro/intelligence, Sam said he had never used one previously, but he agreed to wear one. The section on getaway plans didn’t reference the overts, and Sam said their plan was to occupy and smash weapons as long as possible until arrest, so there was no plan or intention to try and get away.
Sam couldn’t remember if he was shown the ‘legal briefing’, but confirmed again that there was never any discussion of ‘weapons’ or any intention to use any.
In the ‘list of tools’ found (which included axes, whips and kebab skewers) Sam was asked whether these had been discussed as part of the plan, and he said they hadn’t. He said he hadn’t seen anyone using such items at the time.
Asked again about the ‘need to know’ basis, Sam confirmed that at the AirBnB there were various discussions relevant to who needed to know what, depending on their role.
Before setting off for the action, Mr Wainwright asked Sam what he thought was the likelihood of coming into contact with security. He thought it unlikely they would try to stop the activists from doing what they needed to. He didn’t think there’d been any discussion in detail about that, but he certainly didn’t intend or expect to use violence. He just wanted to break in and try to cause as much damage to weapons and to the equipment used to make the weapons. He was not however willing to injure someone to achieve that, nor expected to be in that position.
Sam confirmed he was in the front of the hired van on the journey to the campsite, with everyone else in the back, and then he got into the front passenger seat of the prison van. Although there was a little hatch to view into the rear, and a phone got passed through it, he didn’t really look through it. He did remember shouting through it for people to brace when they were going to hit the fence. He didn’t dispute that the journey was navigated by Ms Rajwani on her mobile phone.
Mr Wainwright asked, as they entered the site what was Sam intending to do with the sledgehammer, and he replied ‘to damage the property’.
Sam was shown some of the footage from inside the factory after the van entered the shutter. Sam is seen holding something – he thought it was wire or bolt cutters – which he may have found in the footwell of the van. He’s heard shouting “Oh my God, we’re in!”. Sam said as far as he could remember, he shouted this because of the several potential points of failure they’d passed, and after some delay opening the inner door. He was surprised they’d got that far at that point.
Sam is seen going back and forth, picking up bags from the prison van. Asked what was in them, he said he thought they’d have the sledgehammers and fire extinguishers etc, but he didn’t know who had packed them.
For a few minutes there is no footage that Elbit have released, and Sam was asked what they were doing – he remembered tipping over shelves with electronics, which he then tried to damage with a sledgehammer. Mr Wainwright showed him some evidence photographs of damaged equipment, and he confirmed that was what he’d smashed.
Mr Wainwright showed another video clip – the first sight of security guard Mr. Luke, and Sam was asked if he could remember what occurred just before this began. He said that he was panicking and worrying about the others and himself, seeing that security had come in to the factory. The clip begins with Ms Head’s screams – Sam is not seen in close proximity to Mr Luke, but he really couldn’t remember anything that happened clearly.
Moving on to Mr Shaw’s BWV footage, which appears to show Ms Head and others shouting at the security guard to get out, fuck off, and so on, Sam remembers seeing him come in from the corner near the loading bay with his head bleeding, but was confused as to why. Sam described himself feeling less scared by Mr Shaw than by Mr Luke – he obviously needed medical treatment and Sam was concerned about his injury, and wanted him to get out – the activists wanted to get on with damaging the weapons used for genocide.
Sam is then seen with a flare in his hand – he couldn’t remember whether Ms Head had given it to him – at that point he said he felt nervous and confused.
In order to give Sam a moment to compose himself once more, a short break was called.
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On return, Sam was reminded he had said something to Mr Luke about ‘wasting his time with a fucking umbrella’. He said what he meant was that Luke would not be able to stop them from smashing up drones, using an umbrella. The next clip of CCTV was the interaction with Mr Shaw, and Sam said he couldn’t really remember it, but he’s seen going off screen into the alcove area, and then next on Mr. Shaw’s BWV shouting at him to get out. Again, Sam has difficulty remembering it, but from seeing it again, he recalls he felt really out of his depth and panicking, and really wanted Mr. Shaw to get out of the factory, out of their way, and to get medical attention, because he was apparently bleeding. Sam said he is generally very squeamish, and couldn’t see the actual injury – just lots of blood.
Mr Wainwright asked if Sam was trying to access the room beyond, and he admitted he probably would if he could, but at that moment he just wanted Shaw to leave – on the clip Sam can be heard telling him he could get out through the shutter, and is heard to say “You can come this way”. The barrister asks if this was a threat, and Sam says it was an invitation to show him how he could leave.
The next clip shows the next interaction with Mr Luke. Sam is shown running into shot, and asked if he can remember what happened – again he says he can only remember after being shown the film several times. His own recollection is in confused flashes, especially as events progressed.
The bits going according to plan were easier to remember. Sam said they weren’t really prepared to be dealing with security – this is not what he thought had happened in previous actions.
The BWV appears to show Sam with a sledgehammer, and Mr Luke had alleged he’d tried to hit him on the head. Sam rejects this accusation. The next clip, from CCTV, shows Sam walking past Mr Shaw after showing him which way he could get out of the building.
Another clip is when Sam was smashing up the toilet, and he explains that he was trying to cause a flood, to damage equipment and keep the factory shut. He tried to block the shower drain with some plastic, as it may not work otherwise. Again at that point, he said he was really not thinking very clearly.
The next clip shown is of Mr Shaw holding the handle of the toilet door to prevent Sam leaving. Smashing sounds are heard. Sam couldn’t work out why the door was stuck, and remembers hitting the handle and lock – this actually ended up locking him in, but he persevered and smashed his way out.
Sam is shown messages from PA Action saying ‘get out through the ceiling panels – use a crowbar’, but Sam says he didn’t see those messages at the time. There’s also a message about the ‘Israeli drones, they are not supposed to have.’
Sam says that after he got out of the toilet he remembers being very wet, and started smashing some dividers in the office area. He is shown some footage which Palestine Action published online. He is seen trying to damage an overhead fuse box – explaining he hoped it might impede the factory opening. He didn’t think there were any security near him at that point – he thought this was probably after leaving the bathroom.
Mr Wainwright asks Sam about the arrival of the police and asks him who he thought they were but he says he didn’t realise they were police because they were wearing similar uniforms to the security staff. He didn’t hear the warning about the Taser or seeing it deployed against Leona Kamio.
Sam was asked what the plan had been, for when police arrived. He said they were going to try and keep smashing until enough officers arrived to deal with everyone – anyone apprehended would go floppy, needing more officers to deal with them. Asked if there was a plan to injure any officers, Sam responded “Of course not”.
PC Buxton’s BWV is then played, which appears to show Mr Devlin on the floor, and security guard Mr Volante moving towards him with a sledgehammer as he gets up, then hitting Jordan in the face. Sam thinks he tried to hit the handle of that hammer to knock it away. The clip continues with Sam walking away holding his eyes (this was after being PAVA-sprayed by PC Buxton).
He remembers his whole face was burning like ‘a widespread nettle sting’, and he couldn’t see anything. He didn’t know who had sprayed him, as he was still focussing on the handle of the sledgehammer. Having seen Mr Devlin attacked, he tried to open his eyes because people were in danger from whom he thought were more security who had arrived, and he also wanted if possible to carry on damaging stuff.
The next clip, showing Sam at first turning away, is played. Volante has gone away to scream at Ms Head and Ms Rajwani and PC Buxton is dealing with Mr Devlin. Sam says he could probably see a bit as he turned back, but he has difficulty remembering what happened next. This is the point at which Buxton alleges Sam hit his leg with the sledgehammer. Sam says he was in a panic and out of his depth, with his friends apparently in real danger. He heard Ms Kamio screaming.
The clip is played where PC Buxton is engaged with Ms Kamio, and she is screaming ‘you’re fucking hurting me’. Sam says that he now knows what was happening from having seen the clips, but he really can’t say he remembered much – it was mostly a blur – there were alarms and sirens and shouting, and a strong smell.
Asked why he swung the sledgehammer at APS Evans, he said he didn’t know whether it was Leona or Zoe but someone was screaming loudly, and still didn’t realise there were police officers there. It sounded like someone was causing a lot of pain and he just felt he had to help somehow.
Mr Wainwright pointed out that the prosecution’s case is that Sam wanted to cause serious injury. Sam said he was so overwhelmed in the situation he was not thinking clearly. The footage appears to show a second swing which might have made contact, but it’s not very clear, and Sam has no memory of this. He said he wouldn’t have aimed at someone’s spine, and it certainly would not have been his intention to do this when he entered the factory. He didn’t remember his reported comment at the time that ‘he was trying to protect her’, but agreed that it was what he had been trying to do.
Asked if he could remember being tasered, he only recalled that the police told him later they’d tried to – it seems the barbs didn’t engage properly with him.
The next clip showed Sam with eyes closed, and his arm over his face. He says the pain from the PAVA kept coming back, but he doesn’t remember how much he could see. PC Buxton alleges Sam was trying to get something out of his pocket, and he was failing to comply with getting rear handcuffed. Sam said he had finally realised at this point these were police, not security.
Asked about his ‘no comment’ interviews at the police station, he said he’d been advised by a series of different solicitors (four or five).
Sam said he felt devastated – being arrested for ‘terrorism’ or GBH was not something anyone envisaged. He was held two nights at Patchway – the local police station – then five nights at Newbury. He was trying to come to terms with the fact that he had injured a police officer – he was told about it by the solicitor that saw him – he was surprised he had been accused of GBH. He said at that point he didn’t feel fit to give any comment, and he also remembered the advice given generally by activists, as well as solicitors’ advice.
In conclusion Mr Wainwright asked whether on entering the factory Sam had intended to use the sledgehammer to injure or incapacitate, even in self-defence? Sam said no. Wainwirght asked if he’d intended to cause PS Evans really serious harm. Sam answered “Not at all”.
Sam might be asked questions by other defence counsel in the morning, and then will face cross-examination by the prosecution.
DAY THIRTEEN OF THE TRIAL – TUES 9th DECEMBER
– the completion of Sam Corner’s case and start of Leona Kamio’s evidence.
Ms Heer began her cross-examination for the prosecution by asking Sam whether he knew what kind of damage a sledgehammer could cause. She asked whether on that day he knew that if he hit a person with a sledgehammer it would cause serious injury. Sam said that at that moment he was overwhelmed. Ms Heer asked Sam if, when he entered and was lucid, he would have known a sledgehammer was capable of breaking bones. She said it had caused a fracture on the police woman’s ‘fourth transverse process’ on her spine and may have caused fractures on her second and third.
Ms Heer asked whether Sam thought he had caused really serious injury. He said he had seen the medical evidence but it was something the jury would have to decide. Ms Heer asked him again for his own opinion, and the defence barrister Mr. Wainwright interjected that Sam was actually right – it was an objective matter. The judge overruled, and Ms Heer again asked whether Sam himself thought he had caused the police woman really serious injury or not? He replied that it was serious, yes, and Ms Heer persevered, suggesting it was really serious, again asking him for his ‘view’. Sam paused, and said he didn’t know if the terms were clear cut, and it was up to the jury to decide, but it was not something he would wish on anyone. He agreed it was serious, but couldn’t be more specific.
Ms Heer asked whether they were expecting security staff when they entered the building. Sam said he was in custody for 7 nights, and in prison for 16 months and it’s been very difficult to think about anything. Ms Heer asked what Sam was told BEFORE he went in to the factory, but he reiterated he doesn’t process new information quickly and couldn’t remember specific bits of information he was given.
Ms Heer reminded him that he’d said he remembered sitting in the churchyard, and getting a call – (he said he couldn’t remember the call) – she reminded him he’d said he met other activists and they watched videos and chatted, and had been shown the planning document. Sam said he couldn’t say exactly which bits they looked at.
Ms Heer said he’d remembered there was no discussion about any weapons the black team would use – Sam replied that he thought it would have been surprising to him if it had come up, and so he probably would have remembered if it came up.
Asked whether the black team were there, he said he presumed so.
She reminded him about what he’d said about there being a ‘need to know basis’, but he said he couldn’t remember the specific phrase being used.
Ms Heer said that the meeting, according to previous witness Charlotte Head, had been very long. Sam said he could only recall the bits specific to him, such as how to use the GoPro (because this was something he’d not done before). He said he’d been taught how to make it stream images, and which app to open on a phone to make that happen.
Ms Heer asked if he knew how to open the Signal chat for the video feed, and if he was told what sort of things to focus on – he thought he should look out for anything indicating links to other partners, and especially any equipment that shouldn’t be there, to show the crimes that Elbit were complicit in.
The prosecutor asked if these things were all mentioned in the same meeting, but Sam thought some of it might have been at the training day. To clarify, he had heard before WHY it was important to film and what to film, but it was at the AirBnB that he was told HOW to film. He wasn’t originally planning to film, but he volunteered at the meeting to take that role.
Ms Heer asked what else he’d focussed on at the meeting. Sam spoke about being prepared to brace in the van as it broke through fences. Heer asked what he knew about the plan once the van broke through the fence. Sam spoke about how the coverts were supposed to keep security away from the shutter, letting the overts get on with entering.
Ms Heer suggested Sam would ‘need to know’ the contingencies if something went wrong, and therefore what the black team would do. Sam said he didn’t really pay so much attention to that.
Ms Heer said her understanding of Sam was that he had difficulty processing things when they were unexpected, so it would have been important to know what the black team were going to do. Sam agreed in theory yes, but at the time and in the meeting it was different.
Ms Heer said that Sam knew the object was to occupy and smash until stopped, even to the point he should behave in a way that would require as many police staff as possible (yesterday he’d mentioned going floppy). Ms Heer asked if he could remember being told to involve as many officers as possible, to slow down arrests. Sam couldn’t remember whether it was discussed at the meeting or he’d thought it up himself. He wasn’t sure when it was discussed, but that going floppy is a common technique used by protesters at the point of arrest.
Ms Heer asked if Sam was saying there was no discussion of what do if security arrived. Sam said he really couldn’t remember. He said he really thought they would just leave the activists alone and go and call the police. Ms Heer pressed him saying there WAS discussion then, but Sam said it was just something he thought would happen, because he’d been told that’s what had happened in the past. Sam said he thought the team would just have to shout at them and they’d go away.
Ms Heer asked ‘what if they didn’t go away’? Sam didn’t remember discussing that. Heer asked if they’d wanted the action to succeed what would be the one thing that might prevent that, once they were inside the factory.
Sam didn’t think there’s ever been an action where once inside, activists haven’t been able to damage, so again his perspective was that that wouldn’t happen. Pressed yet again by Heer, he agreed it must have been a possibility, but said he really didn’t know whether it was something he was expecting.
Ms Heer suggested they’d be very aware the security might intervene, because they didn’t want that to happen. Ms Heer summed Sam’s evidence up as that there was no plan apart from shouting, and then asked the jury to have a look at some footage.
It showed Mr Luke backing away from members of the red team (Ms Kamio, Ms Head, Sam and Mr. Devlin – with Ms Rogers joining later). Ms Heer asked if it was spontaneous or a pre-designed tactic. Sam couldn’t recall how they all came together. Ms Heer asked if he remembered smashing shelves beforehand and he said he could.
A next clip shows Mr Shaw coming into the warehouse, in the corner near the loading bay. Heer reminded Sam that yesterday he told the court he saw that Shaw appeared to be bleeding and ‘seemed less scary’. The clip shows Sam with Ms Kamio both shouting, walking towards Mr. Shaw, both with sledgehammers raised. He was asked if this was a tactic, and Sam thought it was just how they were carrying them. Ms Head is also seen in the background, and Ms Heer asks whether it was a tactic for three of them to approach security together? Sam said it wasn’t a specific tactic, and when asked about using sledgehammers, he said he was clear there had been no discussion about using them in that way.
The clip continued, in which Mr Shaw mentions he was concussed. Sam is heard saying “You’ve only got a fucking umbrella”. Asked about this comment, Sam said that if they turned and carried on smashing stuff, he wouldn’t be able to stop them with an umbrella.
Ms Heer said that at this point he wasn’t trying to stop them. Sam said he must have thought he might try, and was letting him know there was no point. He said he was trying to really hard to remember all this from 16 months ago. Ms Heer asked again whether Sam really thought Mr Shaw would try and stop them, even though he only had an umbrella and was bleeding.
She highlighted that Shaw had come in from outside, and asked whether Sam had thought about why he was bleeding. Sam said he obviously wondered, but couldn’t remember what he thought at the time about the reason. Ms Heer asked whether he thought the black team might have caused it. Sam said it was not part of what had been agreed or what he’d been shown. It was a surprise he was injured, but he couldn’t figure out why he would be.
Ms Heer asked whether Sam had been panicking at this point. He said he wasn’t used to a situation like this and he was panicking a lot throughout the night, and was probably a bit panicked at this point.
The footage appeared to show Mr Shaw leaving, and then appears to show Sam chasing him with hammer raised. Sam said it looks like that and he can see it in the footage, but he didn’t remember it like that.
The video is shown again, and Ms Heer suggested that Mr Shaw was walking away and not offering any threat. Sam thought maybe that Shaw was going to go and threaten someone else, and just wanted to get him out of the factory. He couldn’t remember raising his sledgehammer – maybe it was because he was running – maybe it was easier to carry that way, but he couldn’t remember because he’d never used one before or since. Sam said it certainly wouldn’t have been his intention, when he entered the factory. Ms Heer asked whether Sam thought holding the sledgehammer raised and moving towards the security guard would have frightened Mr Shaw.
At this point the defence barrister intervened to remind the court about the judge’s direction yesterday about Sam’s Autism and ADHD diagnoses – that Sam may have problems with inference-based questions, especially focussing on emotions. Ms Heer however decided to repeat Sam’s last comment, made just before the interjection, that “Yes, probably it did.”
The judge called a short break.
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Sam returned to the witness box after the break, but first the judge wanted to refer to a couple of notes he had received from jurors, and he assured them they would be dealt with at some point later.
Ms Heer asks for more footage to be shown.
Mr Shaw’s BWV shows him walking backwards towards the door, facing Sam, and it appears that Sam swung his sledgehammer down. Sam says it looks like it was aimed at the umbrella. Ms Heer asks whether he remembers aiming it like that at the time. Sam said he probably thought that Shaw’s umbrella was a threat.
Ms Heer reminded Sam he’d earlier said “You’ve only got a fucking umbrella”, implying he hadn’t seen it as a threat, and Sam replied that he was probably saying that to demotivate him. Sam said that he thought all he was trying to do was disarm Mr Shaw. Ms Heer asked whether Sam thought Mr Shaw would have been frightened, seeing the sledgehammer coming towards him. Sam said he’d never had to do this before, and was probably at that moment trying to hit the umbrella.
Ms Heer said that at that moment Mr Shaw was not a threat, was walking away and not trying to stop them smashing things. She suggested Sam believed that because Shaw was still in the building he’d try and attack them, and so he swung the sledgehammer to threaten Shaw. She asked whether Sam was panicking or in control at that moment. Sam said he was probably panicking. She asked whether he was fully in control when aiming at the umbrella.
The clip then shows Ms Head joining Sam, and Ms Heer asked again whether this was an agreed tactic. Sam said it wasn’t a surprise someone would come and help, but it wasn’t a tactic.
Ms Heer said Mr Shaw wasn’t hurting or threatening anyone, but Sam remembered being locked in the bathroom, saying Mr Shaw was trying to get in the way of them destroying weapons and that he didn’t know what the officer would try to do next.
The next bit of footage shows Sam asking Shaw to leave, pointing at the door, telling the security guard he must have a card to swipe and get out. Ms Heer asked whether Sam was panicking at that point, and Sam said he was probably very anxious, but didn’t sound like he was panicking so much then.
The next section of video shows Sam suggesting Shaw leave via the shutter, and in the background Ms Kamio can be seen struggling with Mr Luke, and she asks why Sam started to run towards her. He replies it was because she was calling him.
Mr Luke’s BWV then shows Sam arriving, and shouting “Get the fuck out now”. Ms Heer suggests Sam raises his hammer again, and Sam says he had it in front of him. The clip is played again. Ms Heer says Ms Kamio is at that point walking away with a sledgehammer and Mr Luke was no threat to either of them.
Sam said that all of the security guards were trying to stop them smashing up weapons that are used for war crimes, and Sam was concerned in general that they’d be trying to do something to them. Ms Heer says Sam was threatening the guard with the sledgehammer even as Ms Kamio moved away, and Sam said he was moving the sledgehammer around in front of him so he wouldn’t come close.
Ms Heer asks whether Sam heard Luke say the police had been called. Sam said he hadn’t expected the police to arrive so quickly.
Ms Heer shows Sam a planning document that mentions the nearest police station (Patchway) was just 3 minutes away. Sam couldn’t remember being told that, and didn’t know why he hadn’t been told that. He agreed it was an important piece of information, but he didn’t recall it being mentioned. He said he of course expected them to arrive and he’d be arrested.
Sam was asked about smashing up the toilet, trying to block the drain, and hitting the door and smashing it to get out. Sam said he remembered all of that. He also recalled hitting something like a fuse box, although he said that might have been after watching the footage.
Ms Heer then showed the footage showing Sam move over to the area where the police had arrived. Sam clarified that at that point he hadn’t realised they were police – Ms Heer questioned him on this. Sam said he aware more people had arrived, but he thought they were more security. He said he only realised they were police when he was on the ground and being arrested. No-one said ‘the police are here’.
Ms Heer showed PC Buxton’s BWV again. Ms Head, Sam and Mr. Devlin are seen on the floor, and Sam is looking directly at Buxton. Sam says he still at that point didn’t realise he was a police officer. Mr. Devlin is seen getting up, and Volante hits him with the sledgehammer, and Sam is seen swinging his own sledgehammer. He says he was trying to knock the hammer out of Volante’s hand.
Ms Heer says this is the third time Sam has used the sledgehammer against someone, and Sam replies the first was trying to knock the umbrella away, the second was kind of pointing the way out to Mr. Luke, and the third was definitely trying to knock the sledgehammer out of Volante’s hand.
Ms Heer asks whether Sam was trying to hit Volante and he said didn’t know why he would do that. Ms Heer asked whether it was because Volante was trying to stop him smashing up the factory. Sam agreed he was trying to prevent them stopping him smashing stuff up, but that would really not be by hitting them with sledgehammers. That would be a silly thing to do.
The next section of footage is after Sam is sprayed with PAVA. We see Buxton and Devlin struggling on the ground together, and Sam comes towards them as Volante moves away.
Ms Heer says the footage appears to show Sam swinging his sledgehammer twice at PC Buxton on the ground. Sam says it is very unclear, and the film is shown again slowly, going frame by frame at the moment in question. The sledgehammer moves downwards and then raises again. Ms Heer also points out that PC Buxton’s uniform clearly shows the word ‘Police’. Sam doesn’t remember seeing that. He says he still thought they were a security guard and were hurting one of the team. Ms Heer asked what difference there would be if it were a security guard or a police officer. Sam said it was a hypothetical question and he couldn’t remember what he thought at that moment as he was panicked. Ms Heer asked whether he thought they were ‘fair game’ because they work for Elbit, and Sam said that hitting anyone with a sledgehammer was never part of any plan, and that all he knew at that moment was that they were obviously hurting his friend and he was panicking and trying to stop it somehow.
Ms Heer shows the moment where Mr Devlin is on the ground and not in danger, and PC Buxton is also on the ground with his hand up. She asks if Sam has heard the phrase ‘you don’t hit a man on the ground’. Sam continues to sound confused and reminds the court that this all happened within a few seconds. Asked whether it was reasonable to hit someone with a sledgehammer, Sam said in hindsight of course not. Ms Heer asked whether he now thought it was ‘over the top’. Sam said he’d never been in any physical altercation before, and didn’t know what he was doing with the hammer.
Sam also stressed that he hadn’t injured Buxton and couldn’t remember how much force he was even using, saying that from the video it was hard to gauge that too. Ms Heer suggested it was luck rather than judgement. Ms Heer shows the moment once more and says we can see the force used. Sam disagrees, and she says the jury can decide.
Playing on, we see Sam moves across towards Sergeant Evans. The hammer is raised and we see it swing down towards her back, and then it is swung downwards a second time. PC Adams’ BWV shows it from a different angle, and Ms Heer points out APS Evans has her back to Sam at that time. Sam says she was wearing black, he didn’t see the ‘police’ logo, others were screaming in pain, and he still couldn’t see clearly. Again Ms Heer asks whether it would make a difference to whether he would hit her that she was police not security. Sam says he was confused and overwhelmed and couldn’t answer what he would have done hypothetically if he had known either way. He said the scream made him think one of the red team women was under threat and in pain.
Ms Heer keeps trying to pin him down on details of what he was thinking at any moment, and Sam keeps having difficulty answering such detail, saying he didn’t have time to consider all the options and was acting in a panic trying to help his friend.
Ms Heer suggests it was obvious they were being arrested, and Sam says not a lot was obvious to him, he could hardly see, and all his senses were overwhelmed. When he heard the scream he felt he had to do something. He said he didn’t know Evans was police, and has only seen that in footage afterwards. Ms Heer reminded Sam that he’d expected the red team to be arrested at some point. Sam said it seems silly now that he didn’t realise that. She reminded him of the plan to delay police and engage them. Sam said the plan was going limp. Ms Heer asked wasn’t Ms Kamio wriggling around to make it as hard as possible. Sam said there was no plan to resist arrest, only to go floppy.
Ms Heer said Sam tried to stop them handcuffing him too, and he said he was still confused and thought security might have handcuffs. At some point he realised, but he was also trying to cover his eyes.
The judge took a moment to ask if Sam needed another break, but with lunchtime approaching, he agreed to carry on.
Ms Heer suggested resisting arrest was all part of the plan, but Sam said this wasn’t a tactic they would use. Asked whether Sam shouted any warning to Evans, he responded that he was just confused, and had never done anything like that before. Ms Heer reminded him he’d just swung a hammer at PC Buxton, and asked if Evans had no chance of getting out of his way and was completely vulnerable. She accused Sam of not stopping to see what was actually happening or find out who she was. She asked whether Sam thought the security guards were complicit in genocide, and Sam said he hadn’t acted because of that. He said it was because one of the women was screaming in what sounded like a lot of pain and he acted instinctively, not thinking clearly about anything like that.
Ms Heer asked if Sam remembered Evans helping him when he said his handcuffs were too tight, and her removing one of the Taser barbs from his clothing. Heer quoted Evans asking Sam why he’d hit her, and that he said that she was complicit in genocide.
Defence barrister Mr. Wainwright intervened and said he thought the first response was “I was trying to protect her”.
Ms Heer says notes of the order may differ, but Mr Wainwright agrees Sam had at some point said “You are complicit in genocide”. Sam said he didn’t know exactly why he said it at that point. Ms Heer asked what difference it made and whether he thought she was ‘fair game’. She said it was only after that comment that he then said he’d been trying to protect the woman screaming.
Sam clarified that all the guards who were trying to protect weapons that would be used to carry out genocide were effectively complicit, but it was only when he heard Leona’s scream that he used the sledgehammer.
Ms Heer went through the list of Sam’s actions quickly one by one asking him to respond to each. He said he swung the sledgehammer towards PC Buxton to protect Mr. Devlin. He’d tried to hit a hammer out of Mr. Volante’s hand after the guard had struck Mr. Devlin in the face with it. He’d swung at Mr. Shaw’s umbrella not at Mr. Shaw, to stop him using it as a weapon. He maintained he hadn’t tried to hit Mr. Luke at any point.
She asked whether he used the hammer to threaten and hit people while others destroyed equipment.
He replied that they were all trying to stop people from being hurt – by bombs and grenades dropped from the drones like the ones in the factory. They weren’t there to hurt people.
Heer said Sam knew when he hit Evans that it would be capable of causing serious injury.
Sam reiterated he was completely naively just trying to help his friend who was screaming, with what he thought was a security officer was on top of her – it was the only reason he did that.
Ms Heer said it was a deliberate act. Sam said he didn’t know how in control he was or how aware he was of how much force he was trying to use, or how you can tell from watching it. He knew he was not trying to seriously injure someone.
Ms Heer said it fractured her spine “in three places” [comment: the medical evidence and Heer’s earlier description only confirm one fracture to the transverse process], and asked whether that wasn’t what he intended to do – what did he think hitting someone with a sledgehammer would do. Sam said he didn’t have time to think. Heer asked whether he cared. He said he had never done anything like that before. Heer said he had intended to cause really serious injury, and Sam said “No, of course not”. In hindsight, he said, it’s obviously not surprising there was a fracture, but he didn’t consider that at the time. Asked whether he accepted that she’d suffered serious injury he said he couldn’t decide that and didn’t know.
Sam said he can’t be specific about the level of an injury and didn’t intend to cause any injury.
Ms Heer summed it up by claiming “You’re not prepared to say”.
Ms Heer then moves to a different topic, returning to the GoPro camera on his chest. She asks who it was being streamed to. Sam says he didn’t know, but presumably people in the GoPro chat group could see the stream because they responded to what they could see, but he didn’t know how many or who.
Ms Heer reminded us that some of it was edited and published, and she asked Sam whether he had enquired where it was.
Sam said he hadn’t pursued it, and he might have assumed it would have been deleted.
Ms Heer then asked about the police interview. She said he hadn’t told police he was trying to protect anyone, or that he was overwhelmed or panicked. She put it to Sam that ultimately, whatever the solicitor advised, it was Sam’s decision whether to answer or not.
Sam said he was already expecting to give a ‘no comment’ interview, as recommended by Palestine Action, partly because coverts were involved, but he was also checking with the solicitor, because the action hadn’t gone as expected, and the solicitor was also advising to make no comment.
Ms Heer suggested he had no good explanation for what he’d done at the time, and that he’d been violent and aggressive throughout the time he was at the factory. Sam repeated his lack of explanation to the police was simply because of what he was told by the solicitor.
The judge suggested this was a good time to break early for lunch, as the prosecution had concluded their cross-examination.
After lunch, Sam Corner returned to the witness box for re-examination by his defence barrister Mr. Wainwright.
He told Sam there were questions from the jury, including one inquiring about diagnoses. He explained he’d been diagnosed as “Asperger’s Syndrome” (as autism was then called) when he was seven, and that ADHD was formally diagnosed in February this year in prison, although he’d suspected it for some time.
A second question asked whether he had a photographic memory at all, to which he responded no. Also on the theme of memory, a juror wanted to know whether the Linguistic Olympiad involved memory? Sam replied that It helps if one has knowledge of languages, but doesn’t rely on long-term memory. He said his text memory (figures and letters etc.) was made easier because he also has synaesthesia, so he associates numbers with colours. He confirmed that it doesn’t really relate to remembering past events and so on.
Finally he is asked whether he’s used a sledgehammer before, at home or in a job or suchlike. He said he had seen them, but never used one.
Wainwright asked for a short break – partly to finalise and agree Sam’s character references with the prosection.
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After a 30 minute break which included some further legal discussions, Judge Johnson begins by addressing a question that a juror sent a note about yesterday. It concerned the indictment of criminal damage and asked about the phrase “without lawful excuse”, and a juror asked about those words. The juror asked whether if they decided that they genuinely believed that they were performing life-saving action and were morally compelled to destroy weapons they believed were going to be used to kill civilians in what they believed to be an illegal genocide, would that count as a lawful excuse? They wanted this clarified, as it was otherwise confusing while listening to the defendants. Judge Johnson said that it would not be a lawful excuse, but that he would give further direction later in the trial as to what questions the jury must consider in law.
Judge Johnson said there was also a note today during Mr. Corner’s evidence about the exchange between APS Evans and Sam – effectively whether when she’d asked Sam why he’d hit her, he had said it was because she was complicit in genocide, or whether it was to protect someone. The juror had asked to see the officer’s original written statement because they thought she had contradicted herself in oral testimony.
The judge said they had seen the CCTV evidence, and the written statements are not available to the jury according to the rules, and that the oral evidence was not contradictory and Mr. Corner DID say that he was trying to protect Ms Rogers.
The final evidence relating to Mr Corner was the reading of two character witness statements.
The first was from Sam’s grandfather who is a retired probation officer of thirty years’ service. He spoke of Sam’s close family background and described him as highly intelligent but having some social difficulties in his early years. He cares deeply for people in the world and has deep compassion. He is gentle with people and animals, putting a fly out of the room rather than swat it. Concerned about global warming he lives his life consciously sustainably and as ecologically as he can. He became a vegan, and he also cares deeply about injustices in the world. He is generous, only spending on himself what is necessary. He does socialise with family and friends but is no party person, and prefers games of intellect, or having good discussions, but still has a good sense of humour. He manages his condition by meditation and long walks. He has never been observed with any aggressive traits and finds violence abhorrent.
Sam’s partner (a student at Oxford University) wrote the second statement, saying that Sam is thought of as considerate, gentle, protective and open-minded by their friendship groups, with great integrity and an unwavering sense of justice. She met him at a Palestine encampment at university where he was often seen, even during his final year exam period. He wanted to do a Masters in mathematics, but he did jobs around the encampment because he wanted to hold the university accountable. He did many of the unglamorous jobs around the camp, including long shifts at the welcome tent speaking to the public and often encountering hostility. He consistently helps other people. There are many unhoused people in Oxford, who ask for money. Sam described how he once bought about £50 of food and hygiene products for someone. She only found out because of a receipt – he hadn’t told anyone about it. Instead of presents at his birthday, he asked people to donate to Gazan and Sudanese charities. Prison has been difficult but he still made expensive calls to help her through her own depression. She says he has taught her how to be considerate, compassionate and non-judgemental.
That ends the case for Samuel Corner.
Ms Hammad, barrister for Leona Kamio, called her to the witness box. There is a funny moment when she is given the wrong oath (one for a written statement rather than oral evidence) to read out. The actual oath sounds unfamiliar, swearing by “all sacred to me”, and Ms Heer asks about it. She is told it is a Pagan oath. Ms Kamio asks to be referred to as ‘Ellie’, and Ms Hammad first asked her about her day.
She said she was woken up at 5. Because of her dietary requirements, the prison had said they would send a packed lunch with her. She knew this might not happen because the system is such a ‘shitshow’, so she saved some of yesterday’s food to bring in case. It turned out she was right, there was no food, so she’d shared what she had with the others. She also hasn’t slept for four days because there’s a lot of shouting on her prison wing and has a headache, but agrees to carry on with evidence.
Ms Hammad started with some opening questions.
Ellie said she went into the factory with a sledgehammer in order to help prevent a genocide, because the weapons being made were being sent to Israel to kill people, and she confirmed that no part of the action was intended to hurt anyone.
Ellie was born in Swansea and brought up in a supportive family. Her Japanese father was a drummer but her parents split up when she was a baby. Her mother was a nurse and trained as a homeopath, running a natural health clinic, and a café, and also worked as a Pilates instructor. Her step-father was a teacher.
After leaving school, she worked in casual jobs in London, and for a while at Vice Media, but then performed with a band which got signed to Island Records, gigging at festivals and so on. She was doing that for about three years from 2015, until one of the band members left and the band split up. With money she’d earnt, she went to Asia for a while, and then lived with her mother and trained to grow vegetables, visiting other farms as part of the Landworkers’ Alliance. This was really positive work in her mind.
Ms Hammad picked up on this and asked about Ellie’s politics. She remembered learning about oppression in English at school but came from a very white background. When she moved to London, her understanding grew a lot. Ellie was asked whether she’d ever had dealings with police. Her trust of the police was shaken because her aunt had been arrested and the CCTV switched off in her cell when she alleges being beaten up.
When Ellie came to London she worked at a forest nursery as a teacher – spending time outdoors with 2-4 year olds – it was very challenging but rewarding.
She said she’d started learning about Palestine probably from around 2016 onwards, and first became aware of Palestine Action at their start, when they popped up on her Instagram. She remembered towards the end they had more than 200k followers on Insta, and their stated aim was to shut down the main weapons company for Israel, Elbit Systems. She had seen possibly hundreds of actions as she followed their feeds. During all those years she’d never seen any actions that involved violence against people, or heard them suggesting violence.
She felt that they were ordinary people standing up for justice, when the UK wasn’t. She donated to them, so would receive emails on a mailing list.
Ms Hammad asked when Ellie had actually signed up with Palestine Action. She said it was April 2024. Ellie explained that working at the nursery was full-on and she couldn’t watch so much about what was happening in Gaza. She’d gone to Ireland at Easter to visit a friend on a farm, and was taken to a Palestine solidarity night. Following that she saw some posts from a Palestinian journalist, she watched a lot that night.
At this point she started crying as she described some of the footage she saw. One was of a body bag of a decapitated body, and then she saw a child picking up parts of his mother’s body and putting them in a plastic bag to bury her. Another child grabbed a phone, and screamed “Please help us.” She was still crying and apologised to the court.
This was when she thought more about Palestine Action.
Ms Hammad showed her an email from the group about shutting down the Elbit subsidiary Elite KL, describing how they had managed to shut down their production of Israeli military parts for weeks on end through occupations and damage. There was a call for new people to join training days, and Ellie clicked on the link.
The letter described smashing windows and cameras, and dousing the building in blood red paint. Ms Hammad asked whether she knew they’d used sledgehammers. She replied they’d used hammers and crowbars to damage equipment, but she’d never seen anything that suggested they were used against people.
So she attended a training in north London in May, where she heard from a Palestinian journalist about the history of Israel’s illegal occupation.
There is a brief interruption because someone is banging very loudly in the court cells below – Ellie is happy to carry on, saying she’s used to things like that in prison.
She described how people introduced themselves at the meeting, and a common theme emerged that people felt they had done everything they could, and that they felt they needed to do more.
Ellie said she had regularly donated to Palestine charities and the band had organised a fundraiser. As far as marches were concerned she felt if they didn’t achieve anything at first there was no point continuing. She had written to her MPs too.
The training was described as very much targeting Elbit, but also occasionally other organisations that help fund Elbit as well.
Ms Hammad took Ellie through some of the training notes, and she couldn’t be sure they were exactly the same as what she’d seen, but were covering familiar territory. She remembers hearing about low and high level and arrestable and non-arrestable, and people were asked to move to a corner of the room. She described the organisers were quite surprised so many people moved towards the high level arrestable space. She felt she could do this because she didn’t have children or a mortgage or anyone relying on her, and she felt she should do something meaningful.
Ms Hammad highlighted the legal info which referred to criminal damage, aggravated trespass and burglary. In terms of being arrestable, the idea was to be able to argue the case in front of the jury – “it was Elbit doing wrong, not us”. She said there was no question of violence. She remembered that if taking part in an action people would all likely be charged together, so there was a warning not to take part in something they weren’t comfortable with.
They were taken to another room and told about Signal and Protonmail. She already knew about Signal because her mother had told her to get it years before. She set up a Proton account nearer to the action, but didn’t remember using it. She gave them her Signal name and they put her in a group suggesting an action which then got cancelled. She thought they had decided to do a bigger action because so many people were interested. She wasn’t told what the site was until much nearer the action.
Ms Hammad asked about any other training, and Ellie remembers being asked whether she was a driver, and about dates available. She was then put in a working group probably a few weeks before the action. With code names and so on (which sometimes got changed) it was difficult to track, but she remembered Charlotte and Zoe were there fairly early. She didn’t use a code name herself because she thought it was too late, and if she were going to be arrested anyway she had nothing to hide.
Once she was in the smaller group, she still didn’t know the target, but remembered discussions about possible charges. She remembered Charlotte had a DBS and wanted to keep her job, so definitely no violence, and both Fatema and her had DBS too, so they were concerned not to do anything too serious to lose it. She said someone had phoned her to give some legal advice – she wanted to know how charges might affect her – and she was told as long as the charges weren’t around dishonesty it would often work out OK depending on the employer, so Ellie felt comfortable about being involved.
She was only told about the black team maybe a couple of weeks before, and had no access to any Cryptpad – she didn’t even know what it was. Referring to Apple notes found on her computer equipment, Ms Hammad took her to one written at the end of June 2024, which Ellie thought she’d copy and pasted from some anti-raids information in a Signal message based on information from Netpol.
Around the time she broke up from her nursery work for the summer, there were suddenly a lot of notes, including the start of an interview she was preparing for Palestine Action to publish if she went to prison. It began “My name is Ellie and if you’re seeing this then I’m in prison”, followed by an emoji. She said she abandoned that because it felt like she was manifesting going to prison, and she didn’t take that outcome very seriously, hence the emoji.
At meetings, she’d learnt they’d done hundreds of actions, and only one person had ever been remanded for a short time. There were notes about what to do if police searched her shared home. She intended to copy and paste it to her flatmates just before switching off her phone. There was a list of suggested things to take, expecting to be taken into custody. There were also access passwords in case people needed to cancel them. She explained if she was held for a month and might lose her job, she didn’t want money going out of her account. There was also a note about giving her car keys to someone in case she was remanded for any time. It was designed to copy and paste into the Palestine Action pre-action sheet. Her plan, Ellie said, was that if she was held for a few days, she could drive back to London from Bristol where the car would be left otherwise, so she could start work.
With the time around 4pm, and with defendants tired and hungry, as described earlier, this seemed like a good moment to pause until the morning.
DAY 14 – Weds 10th December
The continuation of the defence case – Leona Kamio.
As Ms Kamio, ‘Ellie’, returned to the witness box, her barrister Ms Hammad asked for some new documents to be shared.
The ‘agreed facts’ state that a search was conducted by police at Ellie’s mother’s address and a device they believed to be Ellie’s was seized. Ms Hammad looked at the report produced by police, which includes what the prosecution claim is an incriminating browser search history. The barrister asked Ellie how many searches she might make on Safari browser in a day. She thought may be ten or so. The police evidence shows 11 searches over a period of more than a month. The first refers to secateurs (which Ellie explained was probably because she had some gardening work lined up). The next search was for boiler suits (27th July) – and Ellie said she was checking sizes, as she was told they’d be wearing red boiler suits and had been asked her size. The next search was for a book (because they’d said to bring one for the police custody). A search questioning whether homeopathic remedies and vitamins are available in prison, Ellie explained this was in case she was remanded for a few days – she was concerned about this as she is anaemic. There was also a message from her mother recommending homeopathic remedies for nerves and shock. Her mother referred to a ‘kit’, which Ellie explains is a set of remedies in a kit her mum had already given her months or years earlier. The next search was for Protonmail, which she’d mentioned she was told to set up, but had not ended up using. Another search showed the word ‘recce’ – which she explained embarrassingly was simply her looking up how to spell it, as others had mentioned it a few times.
The next three searches appear to be within a second of each other – Ellie thought that might have been because of open tabs (she sometimes has maybe 30 or more tabs open, she admitted). One was for “special kit that might break kneecaps” – she thinks that was made a long time ago, because underneath it was a search for French Chateau, which she would have gone to with friends in 2020/2021. She recalled that she and a friend were watching a film called ‘Top Boy’, in which someone’s kneecap was broken, and the search arose out of a conversation about that. The second one had a search for lockpicks, and again she thought this was an old tab, because she remembered it was a skill she thought it would be fun to learn – a set of lockpicks had come up on another site she looked at, but she’d never got round to following it up, so the tab was still there. The third was a more recent search for a type of hiking crocs – she was waiting for them to come on offer, so checked the search often – it could have been any time in the months before the action.
Asked about her knowledge of the Filton site, Ellie thought she first heard about it three or four weeks before the action, and that it was the newest and largest of their factories – Elbit’s “crown jewel”, opened by the Israeli ambassador herself. She didn’t know about the black team until a couple of weeks before, and was told that their aim was to distract security so that the reds could enter and hopefully barricade themselves in before security realised. Fireworks, smoke flares and lots of noise were mentioned as tactics. Ellie remembered a question about paintball guns, which the red team members “squished” right away. Her first knowledge someone had brought one was actually in the court room she said. She didn’t believe anyone was intending to use violence and she said that if she or Charlotte or Fatema had heard this they’d all have said ‘no way’, because they had DBS certificates for work and they didn’t think it was that type of protest.
Ellie was shown the hire agreement for the Enterprise van and asked if she knew why it was needed. She thinks maybe they’d said it was as a getaway van. Ms Hammad showed an evidence image of Ellie leaving Swansea in her own car, heading to Bristol. Once in Bristol she parked her car near the AirBnB and sent a Google map pin to her mother showing where it was, in case it needed to be picked up later – otherwise she was hoping to drive back to London after her release.
Ellie said she was very tired because she’d had a birthday party the night before and hadn’t slept well the previous night, so when she got to the AirBnB she just introduced herself, met the others in the red team, and found somewhere to sleep. The evidence showed that she messaged her mum that she was switching her phone off. She said she does that at night.
One of the organisers told her she’d have to get up at 5.30am, to go and check the kerb near the fence. It was important that it was one of the red team who did this, because they were the arrestables. (She’d been told similarly that was why the van hire would be under her name).
She confirmed that she and Charlotte Head went there to measure the fence width and the distance from the kerb. She also remembered being asked to drop off a couple of other people to make the hole in the fence, and later on she was told to go and pick up the Enterprise van.
On the eve of the action at the AirBnB there was a meeting, and Ellie remembered there was a slide show. This was before they went to bed for a few hours at around 9pm. There was a YouTube video of a guy who flew a drone over the Filton site. Another showed someone trying to speak with security at the front gate – just one guard manning the gate. She remembered a conversation in which one of the organisers said that Elbit didn’t want too many security to bring attention to the site, as locals would be concerned what the company was doing.
Ms Hammad asked what the PowerPoint showed. Ellie said she was at the back of the room, lots of people were there, some of them vaping (which she hates), and she was increasingly nervous about the action. So, she says, she couldn’t be certain it was the same document as in evidence, but very similar, but that she had been looking at the pictures more than the words.
Her memory of the plan was for the black team to get out of the van, avoid getting in front of the van, and to create a wall of smoke and fireworks (it sounded like a good idea if it was not windy, she said). Meanwhile the red team would stay in the van. Ellie describes Charlotte being really concerned that no-one should get hurt, so making sure there were clear signals when to drive, and that everyone knew how to brace.
Ellie says the plan was that the black team would ensure that security were moved away, and the red team would barricade themselves in. The red team split away at the meeting to discuss their own plan, which included Sam smashing up the toilets to cause a flood. Ellie’s role was to try and help barricade themselves in. She thought there would be various rooms and she could use rope and Gorilla tape to hold doors shut. One of the organisers came into their meeting and said he’d packed everything they’d need in the red team’s bags. Ellie remembered the organiser saying the black team would be ensuring that the security wouldn’t hassle them, but they also came up with their own back-up plan to always stick together and do a lot of shouting in the belief that security would then leave them alone and just get the police.
Ms Hammad asked what they were told about police, and Ellie said security would be calling them, and once they arrived there was no plan to resist.
Ellie said she’d been following Palestine Action for years and there had never been any incident where violence was used against security. She said that is not what any of them had signed up to, it’s not what Palestine Action was about.
She thought she got about an hour’s sleep before the action. In all she’d probably had about 12 hours sleep in three days, and she was weak, tired and nervous as she drove the Enterprise van to the campsite. At the campsite, the prison van had already been packed, and they all got into it. She had been told which alcove and seat in the van she should sit at, where her rucksack would be. There was no lighting in back of the van. The black team were outside getting organised, but Ellie wasn’t really aware of what they were doing. Eventually they all piled in on the floor. Ms Hammad asked if Ellie remembered seeing whips at the time. She said she was looking through the window gap after they broke through the fences. She thought she’d seen bits of rope, but was only really aware of a whip for the first time when the security guard came inside with one. She didn’t imagine it had come with the black team.
She didn’t know about axes or kebab skewers, but knew there might be crowbars (for the contingency to get in through the shutter).
Ellie’s plan at that point was to get inside and do as much damage as possible. The crash into the shutter actually hurt people, and then they smelt gas, so there was a panic. A couple of them forgot their bags and rushed back for them. Ellie was regretting not eating or sleeping, and her bag was very heavy. She realised they should have practised using sledgehammers because she was really surprised how heavy it was.
The first thing they did was push some shelves over, and she remembers Fatema Zainab being concerned she might have whiplash. It was a weird moment and conversation, interrupted by them both hearing screaming. They saw a security guard (Mr Luke), and thought Ms Head was on the floor screaming for help. Ellie picked up a sledgehammer and they both ran towards him. He let go of Ms Head and they chased him down the corridor – she described it as instinctual because he seemed prepared to hurt them.
Ms Hammad plays some footage from Mr Shaw’s BWV as he ran into the factory. (His evidence was that he ran in waving his umbrella ‘bluffing’). Ellie thought that at that moment she was on her own and she was going to walk back to her bag to swap the sledgehammer for a crowbar. She described Shaw as looking enraged and about to jab her with his metal umbrella. Ellie says that now she understands why he looked so dangerous and angry, but at that time she didn’t know any of what had happened outside with the black team. She remembered seeing his head and telling him he was ‘literally bleeding’. Ellie said that even before he started to back up, she was still suspicious of him. He said he was leaving but was not going in that direction, so she said “Not fast enough”. In the footage we saw that when he said he was concussed, Ellie’s demeanour changed and she said “You should definitely go then” and told him to “take care of yourself”. She also asked him if he was Welsh – Ellie said it was her way of trying to find some common ground – to reassure him. She had no inkling of what might have happened outside, and couldn’t imagine anyone from Palestine Action would be violent.
Asked about why she had the sledgehammer raised, she explained it was actually resting on her shoulder most of the time, because it was easier to carry it that way as it was so heavy. Ms Hammad shows a selection of shots with it on her shoulder, not raised, but resting. Ellie points out that in the footage she can be seen gesticulating with her arm when she was confronting Mr. Shaw, and had no intention at any moment to raise or swing the sledgehammer.
They had only been in the warehouse a few minutes, and suddenly there was a third security man. This was Mr Volante, who she says was in the alcove swinging a sledgehammer wildly. He then seemed to suddenly have an angle-grinder and a hammer. She says you can even hear the sledgehammer on the video swinging through the air. Ellie describes him as a ‘psycho’, like he’d trained for this and was going to take them on. Mr. Devlin was trying to calm Volante down, but Ellie said he was acting so dangerously, lunging with the angle-grinder at people. She was worried he could literally cut somebody’s limb off.
After more than 90 minutes of quite intense evidence, the judge agreed to a short break.
—
Ms Hammad then asks about Ms Kamio’s second interaction with Mr Luke and shows some of his BWV. Ellie says she thinks Fatema Zainab pointed out there was another security guard (Luke), and Ellie described the scene as very overwhelming. Within a minute, one security guard had already had Lottie screaming on the floor. Then there was Shaw who looked like he wanted to jab her with his umbrella. Then there was psychopath Volante swinging a sledgehammer at them. It felt relentless. She felt it likely Elbit had told their security to teach Palestine Action a lesson because they were losing a lot of money. She knew they hire ex-military people, so really thought they were all going to get beaten up.
Asked why she thought Elbit would do that, Ellie said she’d watched a video of Elbit’s CEO giving a tour and boasting about how good the war had been for business. In the same promo video they interviewed employees who wore lab coats, and they said they saw themselves as civil soldiers for the IDF, and ‘proud to be the backbone of the IDF’. She also knew what the IDF do to Palestinians – a neighbour of her mother had been imprisoned in a Israeli prison and had directly witnessed Israeli guards raping Palestinians, and sexually assaulting them with a metal pole. She said they have no regard for human life whatsoever. So if these are the type of people that Elbit hires, they wouldn’t care about protesters for Palestine. She said it was very clear that they wouldn’t care about harming her.
The footage shows Ellie running at Luke, but she denies swinging the hammer – she was holding it and shouting, and just bluffing in the hope he would leave. She said he actually grabbed the hammer. She was terrified he would use it against them, and she admits she kicked him – something she says she is not proud of. She thought if there was a smoke flare it might distract them, and she called at Ms Rajwani to throw one. Ellie reminded the court she wasn’t thinking straight, had only had one hour’s sleep, and that Mr. Luke was very strong. She also felt that both Shaw and Volante were even bigger and stronger, and more prepared to use violence.
Asked whether she thought she was intimidating, she said she tried to be, but in no world were they less intimidating than her, and that she was very scared of them.
Ms Hammad then showed photographs of damaged computer equipment. Ellie said that once Volante had left, she was desperate to start doing what they were there to do, and she turned to the nearest thing, which were these. She also remembered seeing the big black boxes with drones when they first entered.
Ms Hammad briefly remembered an earlier incident that she hadn’t asked Ellie about in sequence. Ellie could be seen in footage with a fire extinguisher – she said she’d picked it up to use as a spray. She was worried Volante would start swinging more tools at them, so she sprayed it at him.
Footage is then shown of the moment leading up to when Ms Kamio is arrested by PC Woolwich. Just before the arrest she is smashing computers and screens and Ms Rogers was spraying them with a fire extinguisher to make sure they were damaged. They “had a good rhythm going” she said. When she saw Volante and two other men running towards her she turned and froze, with the sledgehammer in her hand, but denied any attempt to swing it – in fact we know Volante took it off her. She does remember picking something off a desk to just to try and continue smashing stuff. She threw it to the floor, and said she was sorry if it hit someone (which is what Volante claimed).
In the arrest video she is seen struggling, and she says in hindsight it looks embarrassing, and not as dramatic it as it felt at the time. But describes she was in a lot of pain as she’d just been tasered, had smashed her chin as she fell to the ground, and the policeman was turning her around, which was pushing the taser barbs into her. He was pulling her arm round behind her and she was begging him to put the cuffs on the front. Ellie said he was kneeling on her and bending her wrist, all of which was painful.
Ms Hammad shows a series of injuries in Ellie’s medical report after arrests, which include quite a long list of bruises, scratches, taser wounds, and even a possible fracture on a finger. It describes sledgehammer damage to her hand, but she couldn’t remember when that happened.
Ms Hammad asks Ellie about her comment to PC Adams after he discharged his taser – “Why did you do that?” She explains she thought he’d tasered the police woman. At the time she couldn’t believe that one of the red team would have injured the police, and she was sure it must have been the taser.
Ellie describes that in the arrest she’s being told to get on the floor, but being yanked upwards by her wrists. She repeats that she was in pain, and overwhelmed and was not purposely resisting.
During the day at the police station, her finger had swelled up but the police wouldn’t let her have any ice. She was trying to get sleep, but she had to keep her finger lifted, and so had probably not slept when she was first interviewed well past midnight the following night. In the course of various interviews she was advised by around five different solicitors to make ‘no comment’ interviews.
Asked to round up her intentions, Ellie said she wanted to smash up as many drones as she could, but she did not have any intention to hurt anyone and would not have got involved if she thought anyone would been hurt.
With her evidence-in-chief at an end at near 1pm, the court broke for lunch.
—
After lunch barrister Ms Oborne (representing Ms Rajwani) showed Mr Luke entering the building, as seen on footage from Camera 20 (not in the prosecution’s compilation). Mr. Luke is briefly seen entering, and then out of shot we hear Ms Head’s screams. Then we see Mr. Luke returning in the direction he entered. Oborne appeared to be asking Ms Kamio to confirm the sequence as she remembered it at that point, probably in relation to Ms Rajwani’s defence tomorrow.
So next came the prosecution cross-examination, and Ms Heer began by asking Ms Kamio to be clear about the purpose of sledgehammers. She asked whether at any time Ms Kamio had used one to frighten or threaten anyone, or whether she ever intended to hurt anyone. Ellie said no, and confirmed that she hadn’t expected to even be confronted by security – let alone hear Ms Head screaming so soon after they entered. The prosecution barrister asked Ellie to show on a map where the shelves were that she pushed over – it seemed close to the loading bay and soon after she’d entered the building.
Ellie said when she first picked up the sledgehammer she thought it was too heavy. She was going to swap it for a crowbar when Ms Rajwani said she thought she might have whiplash, and Ellie was looking at her neck when they heard the screaming and she ran over, still with the sledgehammer.
Ms Heer asks whether the security guard was touching Ms Head as she arrived. Ellie said she saw Ms Head on the floor and that he was backing away from her at that moment.
Ms Heer summed up Ellie’s claim, that she had not only seen security she hadn’t expected, but also thought they would hurt people. Ms Heer then referred back to a defence statement that Ms Kamio had made – in legal terms, it is meant to set out the matters of fact and belief which a defendant is intending to rely on in court. It was made in April this year. Ms Heer highlights a section that describes Ellie smashing equipment, and that security had appeared very aggressive and swinging a sledgehammer at them, and another jabbing an umbrella at people.
Ms Heer points out that Ellie was referring to Mr Volante and to Mr Shaw, but hadn’t said anything about the incident with Mr Luke and Ms Head.
Various extracts refer to security guards scaring them. There is a description of a ‘tussle with a security guard over a sledgehammer’.
Ms Heer says there is no mention of Mr Luke standing over Ms Head anywhere in the statement. Ellie said that she wrote a lot of detail down and that the defence team put it together in the statement. Ms Heer agrees there was a lot of detail – including many pages about Elbit Systems (which the court has not been shown).
Ms Heer suggests to Ellie that the incident with Mr Luke is not in the document because it has been made up afterwards. Ellie replied that not only had it definitely happened, but that we can here Ms Head screaming in the clip.
Ms Heer plays some of the prosecution video compilation again, where Mr. Luke is seen in the distance (from CCTV C20) backing away. The prosecutor points out that Ms Head has her backpack on in that shot, and so had not been on the floor, and that the whole description is made up.
Ellie maintains that although it’s not in the final statement, she had told her legal team about the incident several times.
Moving on, Ms Heer refers to the confrontation with Mr Shaw, where Ellie said he was threatening people with his steel umbrella, and the prosecutor asks her if she had swung her sledgehammer at anyone. Ellie points out that the BWV momentarily shows her backing into a corner by a door, which Ms Heer concedes is right but then points to a shot a few frames on, when the sledgehammer appears raised slightly to one side of her shoulder. Ms Heer points out that the security guard is also shouting “put it down”.
Ellie says Mr. Shaw looked incredibly angry and was running towards her jabbing the umbrella. Ms Heer suggested that surely Ellie would expect the security guard would have been angry. Ellie said she’d thought there would have been only one security guard, as shown to her by organisers in a recce film, and that the black team would have distracted them. She remembered being told that Elbit don’t use much security so as not to attract attention.
Ms Heer highlights that in the film there are actually two guards at the entrance, and asks if Ellie really thought there would be no more. Ellie again referred to trusting the information she’d been told at the meeting, because Palestine Action had done 400 actions.
Perhaps naively, Ellie said she hadn’t thought it was a very high risk occupation, and she believed Elbit wouldn’t have so much security because it would be so expensive to maintain.
Asked why she’d said “It’s not worth your pay grade, man”, she said she’d heard someone else shout it, and just repeated it as part of the shouting, and that she wasn’t really “critiquing herself at the time.”
Ms Heer characterised it instead as a threat. Ellie responded that if they’d meant to be making threats, someone would have said “ Fuck off or I’ll hit you”, and that of course no-one said anything like that.
Again Ellie said she wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying, which is why she came up with ‘something stupid’ like “Are you Welsh?”
Ms Heer asked what Ellie thought had happened to Mr Shaw when she’d seen he was bleeding, and she replied it hadn’t remotely occurred to her that he’d have been hit by a protester. Ms Heer listed the axes and kebab skewers and so on, asking Ellie if she’d known about them, and she repeated she hadn’t known.
Asked again about the meeting at the AirBnB, she described how various people were going in and out with different roles and she didn’t know most of them. She only knew in general terms what the black team were planning. Her only concern was that if the overts couldn’t get in, they might be arrested before damaging anything.
Ms Heer asks again how Ellie thought the black team would lead security away, asking why she thought security would follow them and not see the prison van. Ellie, admitting perhaps it was naive, that the smoke flare plan might not have been so good. In her mind, if things went wrong, they’d at least get on top of the van and it would take ages to get arrested.
Ms Heer asked again why Ellie hadn’t been concerned about what the black team would do, given the warning that everyone was at risk of what any one person might do, and she said it really wasn’t in her mind that anyone would be violent.
Ms Heer claims that in the planning documents, there is no actual description of the black team drawing security away. Ellie says the picture in the evidence isn’t the same as the one shown at the meeting, because there the markings were being added in real time, signifying movement.
Ms Heer asked what the phrase ‘pushing back security’ meant. Ellie assumed it was with noise, but that really in the meeting she was tired, not paying attention, and nervous. She never imagined anyone would get hurt, because they were only talking about fireworks and smoke. She reminded the court that the red team had had a veto. She didn’t think she’d been misled, but that everything had got out of control. Ms Heer suggested that there was no reason for people to conceal anything from Ellie, and that things weren’t ‘out of control’ when they first entered, with items like axes and whips.
Ms Heer asked about the kit packed in the prison van, and Ellie said she found her red team bag already in there, but that the black team were still packing stuff outside the van and she couldn’t really hear or see much.
The prosecutor showed a photo of the van and the view inside. It showed the cubicles and pointed out where Ellie would have been sitting. So when the black team piled in it would have been pretty cramped. Ellie said the journey to the factory was in dead silence and it was dark. Ms Heer said that when the black team got out of the van they were caught on cameras with axes and whips. Ellie said she’d heard some metal clinks, but assumed it was crowbars. When they got out, she thought some were carrying ropes. It didn’t occur to her it would be whips. Ms Heer suggested that it was perfectly obvious, and that there would be no reason why it would be hidden from her. Ms Kamio said she disagreed.
A mid-afternoon short break was called.
—
After the break, Ms Heer shows footage from after Ms Kamio left Mr Shaw and ran somewhere else with a sledgehammer, towards the confrontation between Mr. Volante (who has a sledgehammer in his hand) and others. Ellie says she can’t remember what other people had in their hands as she was concentrating on the “psycho” security guard swinging his sledgehammer around. Ms Heer says Volante is surrounded by people with sledgehammers, but Ellie maintains he is still the one swinging his sledgehammer. Ms Heer suggests that this is not true.
Ellie says she left that alcove and then returned to find Volante now had a hammer and an angle grinder. She wasn’t clear, but thought maybe it was after she’d been over towards Mr. Luke. Ms Heer suggests the angle grinder was brought in by Ms Kamio, and she denies it, saying ‘not at all’. The next bit of footage (from Mr. Luke’s BWV) shows him entering after being in the control room. As Ms Kamio enters the scene, Heer suggests she is running with sledgehammer raised. Ellie says it was on her shoulder. She says she doesn’t feel she could be very threatening towards the security guard because he was a lot stronger than her. Ms Heer suggests that Ellie swung the hammer at Mr Luke and he grabbed it. She says she doesn’t think that was possible and that he’d grabbed it from her. She does admit kicking him, but says he pushed her to the ground. The film is shown again and she is indeed shown on the floor.
Ms Heer asks why Ellie shouted out for help from ‘Chairleg’, which is Sam Corner’s nickname. She says she thought Mr. Luke was trying to get the sledgehammer off her to hit her. She hoped Sam would come to her help, and Ms Heer asks what sort of help she expected. She says she hadn’t really thought that through.
Once Mr. Luke goes through the door towards the control room, Ms Kamio is seen beginning to smash up some property after Volante leaves them. Ms Heer asks why she didn’t swap to a smaller hammer. Ellie says the bag was on the other side of the warehouse, and that anyway she wasn’t thinking straight. As Mr Volante comes back into shot, the three red team are seen with sledgehammers moving towards him and he backs off towards the alcove. She says they were holding on to the hammers to stop him from grabbing them, and just before he leaves, they had ‘for once’ a quieter conversation with him, and he leaves. Ellie does admit she sprayed Volante with the fire extinguisher before he left.
Afterwards, Ellie was smashing computers and Zoe was spraying them, as described earlier. Ms Heer described the entry of the three men and accuses Ellie of threatening them with the sledgehammer.
When asked about the arrest, Ellie says she definitely didn’t feel anyone had been threatened by a sledgehammer just beforehand, and so was freaked by how rough it was and the tasering. She says she was in pain from the taser and its barbs, and that the officer was pulling her up while also telling her to stay down. She maintains, under further questioning, that her reactions were not to resist arrest and that in fact she was taught and expecting to go floppy, but was scared and hurting in the situation.
Ms Heer finally questions Ms Kamio about her ‘no comment interview’ and says Ellie didn’t make statements at the time and has stitched together an account afterwards to mislead the court. Ellie says that’s not true because she is a ‘very honest person’.
Ms Hammad returns for a re-examination, and points out there was no footage from the alcove, where the prosecution claim several people were surrounding Mr Volante with sledgehammers. The position of the dots and triangles – the graphics symbolising where people are thought to have been – have been added by the prosecution and are not backed up by contemporary clear footage – Ellie agrees.
Going back to Mr. Luke’s BWV footage showing the tussle over the sledgehammer, Ms Hammad brings up another long shot from a CCTV, which shows Ms Kamio on the floor in front of Mr Luke, as she had described.
—
With no further questions, Ms Kamio’s evidence comes to an end. The last part of her defence case is the reading of some character witness statements.
There were five of these, and they were truly extraordinary. Here are some brief highlights.
The first came from Ellie’s employer of two years at the Forest Nursery in north London who says she was very surprised to hear that Leona is facing such serious charges. She describes Ellie as an exceptional educator – caring, patient and deeply committed to the well-being and development of the children in her care. She is a compassionate and empathetic person, professional and hard-working. Since Leona has been away from the nursery, her absence has had a big impact on the children and the team. She is adored by everyone. Her job remains open for her and the parents and children would love to have her back at the nursery as soon as possible.
The second was from a close friend and creative collaborator, who works as a community organiser for big brands within the fashion, culture and sports industries, who described the personal help Leona had given them in their own development. They spoke of her music achievements and pointed out that she chose to work with friends over big names because she fundamentally wants everyone to rise together. She loves all creatures, from caterpillars to buffalo, and engages with all living things with such awe and respect, which led her into her training and work in regenerative farming.
The next statement came from the manager of a community farm in South Wales that runs courses for schools, colleges, refugees and asylum seekers and provides food for more than 130 families. He described Leona as hardworking, reliable and able to get along with anyone, competent practically, mentally, socially and emotionally, and that she has a close and loving family who are a supportive unit, with a wide friendship group in the local community.
The fourth statement came from a specialist midwife working closely with women seeking sanctuary and survivors of harmful practices who received an MBE in 2024 in recognition of this work. She wrote of conversations during Ellie’s visits which often turned to health inequalities faced by marginalised groups and global issues such as poverty, racism and humanitarian crises. She described Ellie visiting when she was housing a family experiencing significant challenges with housing and finances, and that she generously gave her entire Christmas to this family, playing with the children, cooking with them, taking them out, and engaging with them in such a natural warm way that they will always remember that special week. Ellie is described as a kind, caring and compassionate young woman who consistently sees the good in others, with profound empathy for the people of Palestine, and the families who have lost their homes and loved ones. That compassion is described as an important reflection of her character.
The final statement was from Ellie’s aunt, a retired chemist who had worked for 30 years for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies. She said that Ellie was born into a family that puts a heavy emphasis on the truth and always interfaces with the world with rare candidness. From childhood she was sensitive and empathetic, ready to question anything. Described as a young woman with a deeply considered moral code, she was raised to appreciate good, wholesome, healthy food and pay honour to the producers. She goes to great lengths to eat animal-friendly organic food and no matter how inconvenient would never buy a plastic bag, in other words she sticks to her principles.
That ends the case for Ms Kamio.
We are effectively halfway through the defence cases now, and tomorrow morning Ms Fatema Zainab Rajwani will take the stand.
DAY 15 – THURSDAY 11th Dec
Fatema Zainab Rajwani gives evidence
Ms Rajwani is the youngest of the Filton 6 defendants at just 21 years old (her 20th birthday was the day before the action last year). She is represented by Ms Oborne. After swearing her oath at the witness stand, she is reminded to speak as loudly and clearly as possible.
At the time of the action Ms Rajwani had just finished a second year at Goldsmiths studying media and communications, specialising in film. She was fascinated by it, seeing it as a storytelling medium in the same tradition of oral and textual storytelling as in the past.
She was also working part-time as a student ambassador (giving tours, organising events, helping potential students). She also did some English tutoring, and worked a couple of days a week on 4-hour shifts at a nursery.
She lived with her family in south London. Her father is a Commonwealth accountant, her mother a licensing administrator, and she has two sisters. She has no previous arrests, convictions or cautions, but has been on remand in Bronzefield prison for the 16 months since the action.
Ms Oborne said that the prosecution do not dispute Ms Rajwani’s “belief” in Elbit’s role in Israel’s genocide, and so would not go into that with the sort of detail that might otherwise be expected. She was asked about her engagement with Palestine, and she spoke of going to peace rallies for Palestine in her teenage years. When a pro-Palestine encampment sprang up at Goldsmiths in 2024, she went to some events, and then became actively more involved later, helping out and sleeping over. Ms Rajwani would clean up, set out chairs, look after the space and so on. The camp was of course peaceful.
Ms Rajwani said she became aware of Palestine Action around the time the genocide began, in late 2023 or early 2024, as it popped up on social media and people were talking about having taken direct action with groups like Palestine Action or Youth Demand. They had taken low level action like locking on or gluing to a road.
After attending every protest, signing every petition and so on, she kept seeing the endless images from Gaza and decided to do more – that was when she saw the Palestine Action sign up on Insta. In response to her inquiry, she was contacted about a training day via her Signal profile (which she’d set up at the encampment). Ms Rajwani thinks the training was around May 2024 in north London. It comprised some lectures on the history of Palestine, Elbit Systems’ role in the genocide, and then how Palestine Action work and what they had achieved.
Ms Oborne shows Ms Rajwani some training documents which, as described by other defendants, gave examples of low level actions like spray-painting, lock-ons and blockades, often leading to no criminal charges. High level actions included criminal damage to Elbit and associated companies, with a distinction between ‘coverts’ or ‘arrestables’.
Ms Rajwani described how the attendees were asked to split towards the four corners of the room, according to the low/high level and arrestable/non-arrestable formula. She felt she had tried everything like student occupations and protests and wanted to do something more tangible. She felt she was prepared to account for her actions and felt privileged enough to do so, so she went and stood in the arrestable high level corner.
Ms Oborne showed Ms Rajwani the training document section on possible legal implications of action, and she said she’d understood there would be charges of criminal damage and possibly aggravated trespass and burglary. At no time was any suggestion of violence indicated.
A page on the documents was marked ‘Actions Agreement’. There were ten points – the seventh mentioned ‘need to know’. Ms Rajwani explained that right from the start of the meeting, to protect everyone, each participant only got told what was relevant and important to them.
From everything she knew about the organisation there was never any connection to violence. There were around 40 people at the meeting, and she remembers meeting co-defendant Zoe Rogers just through striking up a conversation. She doesn’t remember meeting other co-defendants there.
Ms Oborne moved onto the topic of Ms Rajwani’s involvement in the Filton action. Fatema Zainab said she had been approached via Signal inviting her to take part in an action on a date she couldn’t manage. Later on, there was another one asking about August. This would have been her first active involvement, and she asked for a couple of days to think about it. She knew she’d likely be arrested and it was a big decision, but after considering it, she agreed to be added to the relevant group chat. She described the Signal group as being a bit messy, with people dropping out and others joining in. This would have been four or five weeks before the action.
Ms Rajwani remembers several meetings via video and audio – probably six to eight times, leading up to the action. She said she thinks she heard about the prison van smashing into the building halfway through the process, so maybe a couple of weeks before the action.
Ms Oborne asked her about ‘red lines’. Ms Rajwani said she didn’t remember that term being used, but they spoke about boundaries, and that the arrestable red team were the ones taking responsibility, so it was their rules that everyone was meant to follow. Around ten to fourteen days before action, Ms Rajwani remembers being told about the ‘coverts’, who would be there as a distraction. One of the organisers mentioned paintball guns, and Ms Rajwani remembers the six ‘red team’ members were clear this was not acceptable. She thinks Ms Head was the first to say no, but everyone agreed there should be absolutely no violence. Ms Rajwani was very clear that this was set as a firm boundary.
In a legal briefing, she was told about what might happen at the police station, what any charges might be, and she remembered learning that almost every actionist had received bail either immediately or in court later.
She was advised that when arrested, she should give her details and ask for a solicitor, then she would have a police interview and then get bail. The offences mentioned were the same as before. The likelihood of remand until trial was almost zero. The only ones ever remanded had been people who had taken part in repeated actions, and even they got court bail after a couple of months.
Ms Rajwani said the organisers would drip feed info about the action. She knew they were going to try and destroy and dismantle weaponry that Elbit was manufacturing that would otherwise go and do horrific things in Gaza. She remembers being told categorically that security guards would not come in, and that it would take a while for police to come. She described that on arrest they agreed they would ‘go floppy’ – i.e. becoming a dead weight to be carried out.
Ms Oborne took Ms Rajwani to the Cryptpad document, and the Excel spreadsheet.
Ms Rajwani confirmed she had not seen these documents before being arrested, and that she had never been told that the black team would have axes, kebab skewers or whips. Ms Rajwani replied a firm ‘no’ to each of these items, and also confirmed once more that they had already specifically agreed there would be no paintball guns. She was briefly asked to explain what the ‘pre-action’ form was, and she said it was something to fill in as information for organisers in the event of her arrest.
Turning to the ‘sequence of events’ Ms Oborne highlighted the purchase of a coach ticket from London to Bristol, and Ms Rajwani confirmed it was the journey she booked to go and take part, and went on the 4th August with Zoe Rogers, as they were both going from London.
Asked if they’d met personally at any time between the original meeting and the coach journey, she said no. They met Mr Devlin in Bristol when they arrived, and bought some snacks. She recalled there was some delay finalising the address of the AirBnB before they caught a bus there.
On ‘Ring’ doorbell footage, some people were seen with faces covered. Ms Oborne asked why Ms Rajwani didn’t mask herself, and she replied it was because she knew she was going to be arrested. While waiting for others to arrive, she remembers playing on a trampoline in the back garden.
At this point a short mid-morning break was called, but as Ms Rajwani returned to the prison dock there was some commotion as one of the defendants spotted a dead mouse in there.
—
After the break, Ms Oborne asked about what was happening at the AirBnB. Arrestables were given first pick of bedrooms, and she agreed to share one with Zoe at the top of the house. The rest of the evening was socialising, eating, watching YouTube and listening to music. There was also the meeting for an hour or so with the computer and projector that other defendants have spoken about. Ms Rajwani described that organisers were scrolling through pictures and discussing the route of the van in. She thought all the red team were at that briefing, along with a couple of organisers and a few but not all of the coverts.
Ms Rajwani said she hadn’t seen the document other than as projected that night – she confirmed she hadn’t seen a printed version or been sent a link. She remembered they were shown sections of the videos linked in the document, and the plan to drive into the shutter was covered. She was told that the coverts would have a lot of fireworks and smoke flares, to cause noise and distraction and draw the security away while the red team got into the building.
Ms Rajwani said the equipment list was not shown to her. Asked about the phrase “Enter With Vengeance”, and she said she remembered hearing it, and that it referred to going in to damage as many weapons as they possibly could because they knew what they were going to be used for, and how they would be going to cause harm to people
The document alluded to ‘challenging security’, and Ms Rajwani said her understanding was that this meant the kind of bigger distractions they’d spoken about outside, but she never expected the red team would encounter them. Ms Oborne drew attention to a phrase in the document that described a situation if ‘Elbit pigs’ were in front of the van. Ms Rajwani remembered the term was bandied about in a jokey way.
She was also asked about the plan if the driver was dragged out of the van by security, and the reference to ‘de-arresting’ them. She said it pretty much meant trying to pull them back.
Ms Rajwani couldn’t recall hearing about “overwhelming security”, but assumed it meant having a lot of people, to distract them and keep them well away from the red team.
At the bottom of the page there’s a section on legal briefing which repeated the info they’d heard before. Asked if anything was added about assault or high risk of remand, she said not.
The next day at the AirBnB was actually Ms Rajwani’s 20th birthday, and Zoe made her a little cake. Mostly the day was lazing around at the house and watching films. There had been an instruction not to talk about the action around the house unless in a specific meeting.
Ms Oborne asked Ms Rajwani about the GoPro device found, that had two short clips on it. She said it had been agreed that Sam and Ms Rajwani would take them in. The first clip was from inside the AirBnB, and she said she was just trying to check she could switch it on. The second short clip was from the van, but she thought that someone else had shot that.
Before the action there was a final meeting with just the red team, for them to discuss what would happen inside the factory. Apart from obviously destroying weapons and decommissioning the site, they were concerned that they didn’t know what the interior looked like, and they wanted to decide roles, like who would barricade doors after them as they moved around, and who would smash the toilets. Zoe was still anxious about security (part of the reason for the meeting), and one of the organisers briefly joined them and said that they would not be the red team’s problem – they would not be coming in.
Ms Oborne asked again about boundaries, and Ms Rajwani repeated that they had already been very clear about non-violence, so it didn’t really come up.
Ms Rajwani was shown a photo of the six of them together. She said it was the red team all together before leaving the AirBnb, and she thought it might have been one of the organisers who took it.
For the journey to the campsite, Ms Rajwani described there were around 12 coverts and the red team in the van, with Ms Kamio driving. The red team were the first in the prison van, where they got into their red boiler suits. The rucksack bags were already in the van – they’d just brought books and sandwiches which they added into those bags.
Ms Oborne asked the court to look at some photographs. They showed items recovered by police. Ms Rajwani pointed out two books and some food and drink that she had packed. She thought they’d be in the factory for ages – that security wouldn’t come in, and that a police specialist team would take a while to come, hence the sandwiches. (The books were for custody). The red team’s bags were one each in some of the cubicles in the prison van. The black team joined them later on the floor at the back of the van. She saw no whips or axes as they came in.
Ms Rajwani’s phone showed a google map search for the journey, but she said she wasn’t operating it at that time. She remembered being told to brace, but it went wrong and she smacked her head against the cubicle wall as they went through one of the fences. It was pitch black inside the van when the coverts jumped out. Before hitting the shutter, the van waited a while, and through the tinted small windows, Ms Rajwani says she could only see some smoke and lights, but nothing was clear and she didn’t see any axes or whips.
Once the van hit through the shutter she heard someone shout to get out. She could hear shouting and fireworks outside and someone passed her the GoPro around then. The door was stuck a bit, and she had to take a fire extinguisher out of her bag to lift the bag out – she thought someone else may have grabbed it later.
In response to Ms Osborne asking about her intentions on entering the factory, Ms Rajwani described at that point she just wanted to smash up equipment. She said the only reason she was going in was to STOP violence – the last thing she wanted was for anybody more to be hurt.
Once inside, Ms Rajwani’s neck was hurting because of the crash, and she asked Ms Kamio to look at it. There was not much that could be done, so Ms Kamio started pulling shelves over, but then they heard some screaming, and saw a security guard on the other side of the shelves or partition. She thinks Ms Kamio ran towards Ms Head and the security guard, but Ms Rajwani moved away because she was frightened. She doesn’t think she saw Mr. Shaw at all.
Ms Oborne plays the prosecution compilation footage of the interaction with Mr. Luke. Ms Rajwani is seen coming back, still holding a sledgehammer, resting it on her shoulder (the easiest way to hold it, she says). She is heard shouting ‘One over there’, which she explains referred to seeing another security guard – she says she was panicked and started shouting for Mr. Luke to get out, running towards him, hoping he would leave. She then moves a few steps back, after dropping her sledgehammer (because she thought it wouldn’t be useful). She remembered taking stuff out of the rucksack, and had a flare in her pocket. She thought she could use it to distract Mr. Luke because he was grappling with Ms Kamio and she had fallen to the ground.
In her panic, Ms Rajwani thought maybe the smoke would distract him and make him think about leaving, but ultimately she couldn’t actually work out how to set it off.
She didn’t want to interact with security, and decided to head further into the factory to try and find drones to destroy.
Ms Oborne asked whether Ms Rajwani had at any point swung a sledgehammer, threatened to, or tried to injure anyone. She replied ‘no’ to each question.
In the next clip shown Ms Rajwani is seen with a crowbar, which was in her bag, and she is smashing up a quadcopter drone. She’s seen opening up large black boxes with more drones that she’s destroying.
The next clip is from PC Buxton’s BWV as he enters the building. Ms Rajwani is seen standing with her hands raised. She explains she’d just seen Mr. Volante hitting Mr Devlin with a sledgehammer, wasn’t at that point certain the new men arriving were police, and was very scared someone was going to hurt her. She was terrified at that point because nothing had gone to plan – she just wanted it to be over.
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After a short break for Ms Osborne to check which clip she wanted to show next, the footage is played which shows Mr Volante screaming at her and Ms Head to get on the ground. Ms Rajwani describes him as having a sledgehammer in his hand and kicking out at them – her voice breaks as she remembers how terrified she was.
Ms Oborne asks whether Ms Rajwani was aware of what was going on with the others, but she said she could only hear lots of shouting, other noise and the fire alarms. Her knowledge of the whole action was her brief interaction with Mr. Luke and her smashing some of the drones. Ms Oborne plays the short clip that was published by Palestine Action where she and Ms Head were seen giggling. She explained that by then she was hysterical, glad the whole thing was over, and that she’d be going home soon. She confirmed she’d never have been laughing if she’d known anyone had been hurt. At that moment the security guard and police had left them alone on the ground, so it was a moment of relief. Shortly after, Mr Volante came and grabbed the GoPro off them, but she doesn’t know what happened to the camera or the footage from there on.
Ms Oborne asked Ms Rajwani about her ‘no comment’ interviews, and she said that because the charges were way more serious than she expected, she just followed her solicitor’s advice. The next day she was charged as a terrorist. Ms Rajwani broke down in tears in the witness stand as she remembered that week, and said she just was doing what she was advised to by someone more knowledgeable than her.
She did give a prepared statement, and Ms Oborne took her through it as she regained some composure, asking her to confirm whether each sentence was true.
“I had no intention of causing any harm to any person at any point”.
“I had no intention to use violence nor did I”.
“I did not intend that for anyone to use violence nor did I encourage it”.
“I did not carry any weapon nor did I carry any tool with intent to injure”.
“I did not intend for anyone to use any type of tool to cause injury”.
“I did not encourage anyone to do so”.
“I did not see anyone use whips or fireworks against security guards or police”.
“I was scared when security guards came in and I wasn’t sure what to do”.
“However, I did not want anyone to use violence against them”.
“When the police came, I was compliant and I did not resist arrest”.
Ms Rajwani answered yes, that each statement was true, as they were read out.
Asked why she was compliant and didn’t resist arrest, she said that first of all she was terrified, but that also it was never the plan to resist.
She also gave up the pin number of her GoPro phone when asked for it, on the advice of her solicitor.
Ms Rajwani said that she was shocked when she heard about the injury to APS Evans. The first time she knew about whips and axes was later at a police station when she was shown footage, but she couldn’t remember whether that was in Bristol or at Hammersmith, and she said she didn’t understand why those things had been brought. Also, hearing about Mr. Shaw’s injury, she said was really upset and and shocked because they’d drawn a line about violence.
There were no questions from other defence counsel.
Ms Heer suggested that the court rise, on the basis that she will be able complete the prosecution’s cross-examination before lunch tomorrow. (There was always a plan to finish early this afternoon due to a juror’s other commitment).
DAY 16 – FRI 12th cross-examination of Fatema Zainab Rajwani
The trial began late today due to ongoing issues in our prison and court system around ensuring defendants are fed. Two of the young women had not been given breakfast at prison, and then were brought to the dock without court staff organising anything either. One of them, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, is facing cross-examination today, and her barrister Ms Oborne suggested she pass her a banana in the dock, but was told this could not be allowed. Ms Oborne asked whether the judge could intervene, and he ordered that Serco court staff organise fruit for any defendants that had not eaten.
The issue of food has been ongoing for several prisoners, especially if vegan, and only intense lobbying of prison governors, by the mothers of some of those remanded, has seen some but not all issues resolved.
Our privatised justice system eventually managed to provide bananas, and the jury sat and cross-examination eventually began after 40 minutes . One barrister was heard to comment that we appear to have become a banana republic.
When Ms Rajwani was finally returned to the witness stand, Ms Heer began by reminding her of one of the principles of the action, that whatever the red team said was what would guide it, and a clear firm boundary was that there should be no violence. She was asked whether she accepted that violence was used – she said that she’d seen the evidence but couldn’t be sure what had happened, and couldn’t speak for other people’s actions. Ms Heer pushed the point asking whether Ms Rajwani accepted violence had been used, but she said she still didn’t know the full story. She DID accept that some of the black team had taken some weapons to the scene. Asked whether the organisers had concealed the truth, she said it looked like that. Asked if Palestine Action had lied to her, she said maybe specific individuals had.
Ms Heer asked Ms Rajwani to confirm she would have dropped out if she’d known there was a plan for violence. She said she would have spoken to the organiser and said ‘this is something we would have “needed to know” something like this’.
Asked if she would have reported it to the police, she said she didn’t know what she would have done as she wasn’t in that situation, but she would have brought it up with organisers at the very least and would have dropped out if violence was planned.
Ms Heer took Ms Rajwani back to the planning documents we’ve seen many times and highlighted the four types of actions once more, and the possible charges that would follow from a high-level action.
When Ms Heer referred to the plan for this particular action, Ms Rajwani reminded her that she’d only been shown some of it at the time. Ms Heer drew attention to the action described as ‘High Level ++’, and asked what it meant. Ms Rajwani said she’d only signed up to ‘High Level’ and didn’t know what that meant and hadn’t particularly noticed it, other than to assume it was because it was an important new Elbit target – the first time it had been occupied.
The document again mentioned ‘aggravated burglary’ and ‘assault’ (taking on security), and ‘affray’. It also mentioned high risk of remand. Ms Rajwani said these extras had not been discussed, and that being given solicitor’s details and warned of risk of remand were standard.
Ms Heer asked whether the organisers set out to deceive Ms Rajwani, and she agreed she felt a little bit deceived by someone, but that it didn’t fit in to anything else she’d ever seen Palestine Action carry out.
Ms Heer asked if Ms Rajwani had filled in the ‘pre-arrest’ form, and took a look at it. The heading was ‘pre-arrest form for arrestees and potential prisoners’. Ms Rajwani said it was standard wording. The form included a warning that it was aimed at various people including those held on remand. Ms Rajwani repeated that remand had only been given to repeat offenders, and even they had got out on court bail.
Ms Heer asked whether Ms Rajwani thought about what she was doing, and that she might end up in prison – the form included information about prison support. Ms Heer suggested the form stated the possibility of periods in prison. Again, Ms Rajwani said it was a general form.
Ms Heer pointed to sections about prison support, call-outs for letter-writers, protests outside prison, and so on. Again she asked Ms Rajwani if that didn’t worry her that she was involved in such a high-level action. Ms Rajwani said she’d seen many others fill in these forms and it had never been a problem.
The action plan mentioned Elbit’s newest site was previously untargeted and was highest-secured. It then mentioned overwhelming security. Ms Rajwani said she understood that to mean in terms of numbers.
So, posed Ms Heer, Ms Rajwani must have understood the action would cause serious financial and reputational damage, and asked why she was so sure Elbit would simply let her get on with smashing it up. Again, Ms Rajwani said in terms of everything she’d seen Palestine Action do before, and Elbit’s reaction, she trusted what she was told.
Ms Rajwani said the plan was shown as pictures, with people talking about it, so she had never seen all the wording. Ms Heer says the document plan doesn’t define how the black team would ‘lead away’ any security. She quotes the black team would throw smoke flares, and it would ‘shock’ security if they make their way through the smoke. Ms Rajwani said she understood that to mean lots of noise, shouting, firing fireworks into the air.
Ms Heer asked if there was any mention of axes, fireworks aimed at people, whips and so on. Ms Rajwani said no.
Quoting ‘pushing back security’ and ‘challenging them’, Ms Heer asked what that meant. Ms Rajwani said she thought it would mean maybe splitting into different groups, shouting and screaming, but it wasn’t really something that she had thought about.
Ms Heer brought up the Cryptpad, (after acknowledging that Ms Rajwani had not ever seen it), and asked whether Ms Rajwani had seen the items listed. Ms Rajwani said it had never been part of any plan she knew about it, and asked if the organisers would have thought that if the red team knew the plan, it would have failed. Ms Heer suggested that therefore, the black team must have tried to hide the plan to use whips and so on from the red team. So, wondered the prosecutor, why were people from the black team at the same Bristol address, and she asked didn’t Ms Rajwani speak with them about the plans.
Ms Rajwani said people were told from the start that no-one should speak about the action outside of organised meetings, and that this protocol included at the AirBnB (because of phones and security). She said that most of the black team only turned up during the evening for the final meet, although she agreed some were there earlier, which was why the Ring door cameras were taken down.
Ms Heer suggested there was a real risk for organisers in having the red team and black team at the AirBnB together, and travelling together to the campsite, and to the factory. Ms Rajwani put this all down to them actually being quite disorganised. Ms Heer suggested that in reality they all knew what each other’s roles were, but Ms Rajwani maintained they were all encouraged not to talk about one another’s roles.
Ms Heer spoke about the footage of the black team jumping out of the van with weapons in hand. Ms Rajwani reminded the court that the van was very dark and that therefore she couldn’t see what they had.
Returning to the belief that no security would enter the factory, Ms Heer asked again why Ms Rajwani thought so. She responded that with hindsight this was a new situation with a new target, but that all her experience and what the organisers had assured her of, was what she trusted. She had seen it on social media, and knew people who had carried out actions before.
Ms Heer asked if Ms Rajwani thought there would be any risk of seeing security guards. She said of course there was a small risk, but that they would not get involved and would go and call the police.
Asking what Ms Rajwani’s intentions were, Ms Heer suggested she’d only taken in equipment in order to film and to destroy weaponry – this would include getting information on other companies? Ms Rajwani said this would be other companies enabling genocide, and she thought the camera was streaming all the footage somewhere.
Ms Heer reminded Ms Rajwani she’d said the sledgehammer was too heavy, and she’d used a crowbar at times instead, and rested the hammer on her shoulder when she was carrying it, then asked about the crash and Ms Rajwani’s concerns over whiplash. When Ms Kamio had run off towards Ms Head, Ms Rajwani confirmed she went in the other direction, towards the centre of the warehouse, leaving her bag, and started hitting equipment with the sledgehammer. Ms Heer asked why she didn’t swap it for a smaller hammer or crowbar at that point? Ms Rajwani said she probably should have switched earlier, but she wasn’t really thinking very clearly.
Ms Heer reminds Ms Rajwani she is seen going back with the sledgehammer, and she said it was a bit of a blur but she thought she was just walking around looking for things to damage, still thinking she’d probably have plenty of time to swap later.
Ms Heer said she already knew there were security IN the warehouse, and asked if that was the reason she kept hold of the sledgehammer. Ms Rajwani insisted it wasn’t, and repeated that everything was very overwhelming during that period, and that she still thought they would leave soon and she could carry on looking for and damaging quadcopters.
Ms Heer plays some footage just after the van enters the building, and asks where the GoPro was, when Ms Rajwani is first seen. She thinks it may have been in her hand, and she fitted it to her helmet around the time she spoke to Ms Kamio about her whiplash. Asking where the footage went, Ms Rajwani said she had no idea, and would have no idea who to ask – everyone at that point had been using code names.
Ms Heer suggested the footage would have given a continuous record of her actions that night. Ms Rajwani said she’d thought about it, but didn’t know how to pursue it.
The court is shown some of the prosecution’s compilation footage. Ms Rajwani is seen with the sledgehammer on her shoulder, and she looks up and shouts out something like “There’s one there”, when Mr. Luke comes into sight. At that point he is unarmed and not trying to intervene. Ms Kamio moves towards him, and Ms Rajwani walks towards him too (with the sledgehammer on her shoulder), shouting at him to leave.
Ms Heer asks whether it would have been intimidating to the guard to see people approach shouting, with sledgehammers in hand.
Ms Rajwani said that Mr Luke actually grabbed the sledgehammer off Ms Kamio, so didn’t agree he was intimidated. She backed away and dropped the hammer (which she described as being of no use in this situation). As the footage is shown, she’s asked whether she saw Ms Kamio kick Mr Luke, or see Ms Head whip him. The footage is not clear enough, but Ms Rajwani says she definitely doesn’t remember seeing that. She was also in shock and terrified at that moment.
Ms Heer asked if the three of them were acting together at that point to threaten Mr. Luke. Ms Rajwani said she really had no idea what was going on.
Playing the footage frame by frame, Ms Heer highlights the moment Ms Head runs away, when Ms Rajwani is still holding a sledgehammer. She pauses the clip where Ms Rajwani no longer has the sledgehammer and Ms Head does. Ms Heer accuses Ms Rajwani of handing the sledgehammer to her, who threatens Mr Luke with it. Ms Rajwani says she is sure she put it on the floor.
Ms Heer plays the footage again, agreeing that it is very difficult to see exactly. Ms Head is seen passing the sledgehammer on to Mr. Devlin.
It is agreed that Ms Rajwani had a flare in her pocket, and Ms Heer asks why, if she didn’t expect to see any security she would have it, because the flare wouldn’t damage property.
Ms Rajwani said she was just pulling stuff out of the bag but that she hadn’t packed the bag.
The footage shows that Ms Rajwani lit the flare and was waving it around in the background when Mr. Corner comes into the scene. Ms Heer suggested the person she was trying to distract was Mr Luke, to create an ‘advantage’ to Ms Kamio and Mr Corner. Ms Rajwani said she didn’t know Mr Corner was going to run up and just thought the security guard was going to hurt Ms Kamio, who at one point was thrown to the floor, and she lit the flare because she was scared for her.
In the next section of clip, Mr Luke is heard saying he’d called the police, and Ms Rajwani said she thinks she remembers hearing that.
The court took a short break before the final stage of cross-examination.
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On her return, Ms Rajwani was asked about the moment when Mr Volante came over to her and Ms Head, shouting at them to get on the floor. She’d described Mr Volante as kicking out towards them. Ms Heer asked whether he’d actually kicked either of them, playing the footage, which appeared to show him kicking the sledgehammer and crowbar away (both of which were on the floor). Ms Rajwani said that where they were on the floor just after being screamed at, it looked very different, but accepted that’s what it looked like on the clip.
Finally Ms Heer asked the questions about the ‘no comment’ interviews. Ms Rajwani agreed that there’s a general instruction not to comment in police interviews, but added that the things that had happened, and the charges on arrest were not things she’d expected, and so she listened to her solicitor’s advice. She was terrified when she was then arrested under the terrorism act, and so was obviously just going to listen to her solicitor.
Ms Heer asked again whether she’d been instructed to make no comment by Palestine Action, and Ms Rajwani said, obviously it’s a recommendation to protesters generally, and is not specific to Palestine Action. Ms Heer pursued the point, asking if ‘one’ of the reasons was because PA had told her to.
Ms Heer said that by taking that advice, it had allowed Ms Rajwani to look at the evidence and “stitch together” an account with her co-defendants. Ms Rajwani responded “That’s simply not true”.
Defence barrister Ms Oborne re-examined briefly, and reminded the court that Ms Rajwani had given the police the mobile phone PIN code, and had given a prepared statement, which Ms Oborne asked the jury to look at. Asked if she had said anything in court that was different to what she’d said in the prepared statement, Ms Rajwani said everything had been in line with that original statement.
Ms Oborne also asked Ms Rajwani to address the allegation that she had handed a sledgehammer to Ms Head. Ms Rajwani confirmed she had dropped it and left it and took out the flare because she was scared, didn’t know what she was doing, and thought the flare might provide some distraction to stop Ms Kamio from being hurt.
Asked why she used a flare rather than a sledgehammer, Ms Rajwani asked “what would I do with a sledgehammer? I obviously wasn’t there to incite any kind of violence”.
Ms Oborne also wanted to cover some other specific points. Returning to the planning document and the legal briefing, Ms Rajwani was asked when she’d been given her legal briefing, and she remembered it was during one of the team’s online meetings during July, but at the AirBnB she thought she’d just been reminded about charges and given a solicitor’s number.
Ms Oborne reminded the court of the prosecution’s allegation that nowhere in the planning document did it state that the black team were going to be used as a distraction. She asked Ms Rajwani to read out a description under some screenshots on the first page, as follows: “Coverts causing distraction while assisting overts advance towards entry points”. Ms Rajwani confirmed that’s what she’d been told their role was.
The defence barrister also took Ms Rajwani to the next page with an equipment list for coverts. Ms Rajwani confirmed there was no mention of whips or axes, she’d never been told otherwise, and she’d been shocked when she was told about it after the incident.
Ms Oborne also asked whether Ms Rajwani had ever been told she was at high risk of remand, and asked what her plans had been for September 2024. Ms Rajwani said she intended to continue her third and final year at university, her voice breaking as she was asked if she’d expected to be held in prison all year.
Ms Oborne ended her re-examination by asking whether Ms Rajwani had intended to hurt anyone or encouraged anyone else to hurt or injure anyone in that action. She replied ‘no’.
That completed Fatema Zainab’s evidence, and was followed by character witness statements.
The first came from a qualified doctor who has known her for many years and was formerly her teacher at a Saturday school. She described Ms Rajwani as a highly respectful, hardworking and very intelligent member of the community – helpful, honest and very sensible, volunteering at the local community centre helping the elderly, and as an infant teacher.
The next came from a project director and MBA graduate who wrote that they wanted to reassure the court that Fatema was, in their experience, a person of integrity, non-violence and responsibility – always law-abiding and conscientious, and deeply respected by her peers and community members.
The third came from a long-time family friend and a professional chartered accountant colleague of Ms Rajwani’s mother. She said that she had always known Fatema Zainab as a person of great kindness, empathy and integrity, that her actions are guided by a strong moral compass and that she consistently treats others with respect and compassion. The statement spoke of Ms Rajwani’s kind and compassionate nature in her interactions with children. Referring to the charges against her, the statement stated that she is known as a kind, compassionate and responsible individual with a strong sense of right and wrong.
Ms Rajwani’s first university tutor said she showed real promise, and commended her skill and dedication. They described Ms Rajwani as getting on well with everyone, with a very inclusive attitude, willing to help peers and create a positive environment. They said that Fatema Zainab is an asset, and that they believed her intentions were good.
The final statement came from her second year lecturer, who again commended her dedication and skill, commending her intellectual curiosity and a “collaborative spirit that enriched class discussions”.
Ms Oborne read out some final agreed facts to add in to evidence, relating to Ms Rajwani’s medical assessment after arrest which confirmed bruising and pain to the back of her neck, and that she was very anxious and finding it hard to eat or drink. There was also confirmation that she had agreed to hand over the mobile phone PIN number when requested to do so by counter terrorism police.
That completed the case for Ms Fatema Zainab Rajwani.
Coverage continues for Week Five here
