The British government has announced that it will ban as a terrorist group a pro-Palestinian organization that broke into a British air base on Friday and vandalized President Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland in March.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, announced the move against the group, Palestine Action, on Monday, three days after members damaged military planes using red paint at Britain’s largest air force base, at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.
In a statement on Monday, Ms. Cooper said that a legal order to ban the group would be formally submitted to Parliament on June 30. She said the group had “orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action” against defense companies and other targets, putting Britain’s national security at risk, and that its activities met the legal definition of terrorism because they included “serious damage to property.”
Palestine Action will join more than 80 groups banned as terrorist organizations by the British government, including the Islamic State, Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, as well as Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group.
Jonathan Hall, the British government’s top adviser on terrorism laws, told The New York Times that to his knowledge the ban of Palestine Action would be the “first time that a group has been proscribed on the basis of serious damage to property” in Britain, rather than because of the use of, or support for, serious violence.
He said that the targeting of the air force base had moved the group’s activities into “the zone of national security” and had acted as “a tipping point” for the government.
The decision was criticized, however, by several human rights groups, and supporters of Palestine Action gathered to protest against the ban in Trafalgar Square, in central London, on Monday afternoon.
Sam Grant of Liberty, a British civil liberties organization, said it was a “shocking escalation” of wider moves to increase legal powers to control protest in Britain.
“This move needs to be viewed in light of the sustained crackdowns on protest we have seen from successive governments over recent years, and the worrying fact that there are more and more nonviolent protesters spending years in prison,” he said.
The order banning the group has to be debated and approved by Parliament, but such orders are normally passed into law unopposed.
The law will make it a criminal offense to be a member of Palestine Action, to raise funds for the group or to “invite support” for it, to arrange meetings, to display its logo or to fail to disclose information about any banned activities to the police.
In March, President Trump referred to members of the group accused of vandalizing his Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland with pro-Palestinian messages as “terrorists” and called for them to be “treated harshly.”
The activists had defaced the resort’s clubhouse with red paint and painted part of the golf course with the phrase “Gaza is not 4 sale.”
The Terrorism Act 2000, introduced under a previous Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, allows the government to ban any group “concerned in terrorism,” but contains a broad and flexible definition of what terrorism is.
It covers the use or threat of action that involves serious violence against a person or endangers someone’s life, involves serious damage to property, creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or is designed to seriously disrupt or interfere with an electronic system.
To meet the legal definition of terrorism, such threats or actions must be designed to influence the government or intimidate the public, and be “for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.”
Mr. Hall was not directly involved in the decision to ban Palestine Action, but said that banning groups as terrorist organizations gave the police “greater scope” to disrupt their organization and funding, adding: “The assessment must have been that the powers are useful.”
Palestine Action has carried out a series of acts of vandalism, mostly targeting sites operated by Elbit Systems U.K., the British subsidiary of an Israeli weapons manufacturer.
Last August, activists broke into an Elbit research and development facility near Bristol in western England, where they smashed equipment and damaged property. Two police officers and an Elbit employee were injured. The 18 people arrested were later charged with offenses including criminal damage and violent disorder with a “terrorist connection,” which allows courts to give harsher sentences if crimes are deemed to have a terrorist motivation.
Amnesty International U.K. said in a statement: “Terrorism powers should never have been used to aggravate criminal charges against Palestine Action activists and they certainly shouldn’t be used to ban them.”
In 2000, when Britain’s current terrorism definition was created, several lawmakers tried to remove or change the “serious damage to property” clause. A Home Office minister at the time, Steve Bassam, told Parliament the move was needed because of Irish Republican Army bombings at “government buildings and other symbolic targets where a warning has been given,” meaning nobody was injured.
The post Group That Vandalized Trump Golf Course Faces U.K. Ban Under Terror Law appeared first on New York Times.
