A Palestine Action activist has been jailed as a terrorist for causing property damage – the first time the UK courts have applied such a designation to a protest-related offence without any intention to harm a person. Leona “Ellie” Kamio, 30, was sentenced to six years in prison for her part in a raid on an Elbit Systems factory near Bristol in August 2024 that caused £1.2 million of damage.
Her mother, Emma Kamio, has described the case as a “stitch-up” and argued that her daughter did not receive a fair trial because the jury was never told that the defendants could later be sentenced on the basis of a “terrorism connection”. “The jury did not know what was ahead of them. The whole thing’s been a stitch-up,” she said. “I think it’s quite clear that all the rules of democracy have gone completely out of the window.” She warned that “the slippery slope to authoritarianism was already here”.
Kamio, along with Samuel Corner, 23, Fatema Rajwani, 21, and Charlotte Head, 30, was convicted of criminal damage. Corner was additionally convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent after striking Police Sergeant Kate Evans with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. Between them they were sentenced to a total of 26 years and 4 months in prison. The four will also spend an additional year on licence and be subject to 15 years of terrorist notification requirements, meaning they must inform authorities of their movements long after release.
Two other defendants, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31, were acquitted of the same charge by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court. The group – referred to as the Filton 4 – had previously been acquitted of aggravated burglary in a trial in February 2026 before facing the retrial that led to the terrorism sentencing.
Unprecedented legal ruling
The heart of the controversy is the judge’s decision to apply a “terrorism connection” under section 69 of the Sentencing Act 2020 at the sentencing stage, even though the jury had not convicted any defendant of terrorism. Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson ruled that the criminal damage was “designed to influence the UK government and to intimidate a section of the public” and was carried out “for the purpose of advancing an ideological or political cause”. He accepted the prosecution’s argument, led by Deanna Heer KC, that a training manual referring to Britain’s “imperial” role in the Middle East demonstrated the raid was an attempt to further a political cause. “Inside the warehouse, they set about destroying as much property as they could,” Heer said.
Legal experts and campaigners have described the ruling as “chilling”. Rosalind Burgin, the barrister at Garden Court North Chambers who represented Kamio, said: “What’s particularly novel in this case is that criminal damage alone – so nothing to do with violence against a person, nothing to do with harming a person at all – is being tried as a terrorism offence. We don’t know of any other case where that has happened. There have been cases where murder has been sentenced with a terrorism connection but not this. It’s property alone and no suggestion of violence against a person. That’s the bit that’s completely unprecedented. If this continues, it’s a real threat to wider protest.”
The jury was not informed that a terrorism connection could be applied at sentencing; reporting restrictions also prevented the media from disclosing that possibility until they were lifted on 12 May 2026. Defence lawyers had attempted to have Mr Justice Johnson removed from the case on grounds of alleged bias, and a formal complaint was filed against him.
Implications for protest rights and legal challenges
The case has drawn condemnation from a wide range of public figures. More than 100 celebrities, MPs, lawyers and rights campaigners – including Sally Rooney, Greta Thunberg, Steve Coogan, Lord John Hendy KC, Paul Gilroy, Zoe Wanamaker and John McDonnell MP – signed an open letter calling the sentencing “unjust”. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Liberty have expressed concern that the ruling sets a dangerous precedent for the right to protest in the UK. Zing Tseng, Kamio’s former boss at Vice magazine, said: “She’s been sentenced as a terrorist even though she has been convicted of criminal damage. To me, it is absolutely nuts … If you walk down east London on a night out, there are 10,000 Ellies having a girly drink with their friends and then on Monday they’re going to do their social media job. This could be literally any one of us. It massively opens the door for anyone taking direct action to be sentenced as a terrorist.”
The mother of the activist, who was herself arrested by riot police in connection with the crime and later released, described the six defendants as “six geeks” – four young women, three of them autistic, all university-educated with no prior convictions. Kamio, she said, was a former teenage musician who signed to Island Records and later worked for Vice magazine before becoming a teacher at a private day school in Walthamstow, London. A nature lover whose dream is to live on a farm, her school has said she is welcome to return to her job. Her mother said Kamio was driven by the war in Gaza, where authorities say more than 20,000 children have been killed since October 2023, and a UN investigation has since found Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians – claims Israel denies. “Nelson Mandela was classed as a terrorist and now there’s a statue of him in parliament,” Kamio’s mother added. She also claimed her daughter’s sentencing has already affected the family’s life, with a mortgage application turned down because lenders feared “reputational damage”.
Days after the sentencing, the Court of Appeal ruled that the government’s ban on Palestine Action as a proscribed terrorist organisation was lawful, overturning a High Court decision from February 2026 that had found the ban unlawful. Palestine Action had been banned by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper in July 2025 after members broke into RAF Brize Norton and vandalised jets. Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr told the court that the proscription was “a justified and proportionate interference with individual rights” and that it was “not accurate” to describe the group as “an ordinary protest group”. She said Palestine Action “overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism” and “engaged in causing serious damage to property” that “presented a very real risk of injury not only to property but also to members of the public”. In their ruling, the judges added that Palestine Action “had little or nothing in common with the suffragettes or the anti-apartheid or Iran war protest groups”. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood welcomed the decision, stating the group’s actions were “not consistent with democratic values and the rule of law”. Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori has vowed to fight the ban to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
