Six British anti-Israel activists were acquitted on Wednesday of aggravated burglary over a 2024 raid on the Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems UK factory in Bristol, with the jury returning no guilty verdicts, Reuters reported.
The six were members of Palestine Action, a group that has since been banned in Britain. Prosecutors said the activists carried out a carefully planned assault on the Elbit facility in the early hours of August 6, 2024, using a white former prison van to ram the entrance before smashing equipment inside. The damage was estimated at about 1 million pounds.
The raid took place roughly ten months after Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led massacre of October 2023.
British police recently released footage from the Palestine Action raid on the Elbit factory.
At the start of the trial in November, prosecutors told the jury at Woolwich Crown Court that the defendants were part of a larger group involved in the attack. The activists argued they were motivated by a desire to stop what they called Israel's "genocide" in Gaza and admitted they intended to damage the factory, but also claimed they opposed violence against people.
The six activists were all acquitted of aggravated burglary after more than 36 hours of jury deliberations and were also found not guilty of violent disorder. The jury could not reach verdicts on violent disorder charges for three of them, nor on an additional charge of criminal damage.
The British government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last July, days after its activists protesting the Gaza war broke into an air force base in southern England, causing an estimated £7 million in damage to two aircraft.
Palestine Action has challenged the ban in court.
Founded in 2020, Palestine Action describes itself as a “direct action" network opposing what it calls British “complicity" with Israel, particularly in relation to arms sales.
The group also previously defaced a painting of Lord Balfour at Trinity College Cambridge, spraying the portrait with red paint and slashing it.
In another incident, Palestine Action members stole two busts of Israel’s first President, Chaim Weizmann, from a glass cabinet at Manchester University.