Polden, David

On 5 August, Italian Ploughshares activist Turi Vaccaro was arrested near Niscemi in southern Sicily, and then imprisoned in the capital, Palermo. The barefoot campaigner will serve an 11-month, 27-day sentence in a maximum-security prison for nonviolent direct action against the MUOS military satellite communication system. MUOS is used to direct US drones, among other ‘mobile users’.

Italian special police attempted to arrested Turi at this summer’s annual ‘No MUOS’ protest camp…

The Great March of Return demonstrations at the Gaza-Israel border fence have not only continued every Friday since March, they are escalating. Protests now happen on other days of the week as well, after ceasefire talks between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Israeli government broke down.

During these demos, Israeli forces have killed over 130 unarmed Palestinians, including 29 children and three medics. Around 20,000 Gazans have been injured, nearly 5,000 by live…

In early August, the annual fast in remembrance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings was held in seven countries.

In London, four people fasted behind the ministry of defence in Whitehall. They also held a demo outside Downing Street urging the UK to sign the UN global ban on nuclear weapons.

Long-time Scottish peace activists Janet Fenton and Brian Quail fasted in Edinburgh and Glasgow. In…

Earlier this summer, Glasgow city council announced that it would not host any more arms fairs and three anti-arms trade protesters in Cardiff were acquitted of trespass outside an arms fair.

In Glasgow, there were protests against the Undersea Defence Technology (UDT) exhibition in Glasgow, sponsored by arms manufacturers BAE Systems and Babcock. Despite the criticism, the Scottish National Party-controlled council defended the UDT arms fair in mid-May, only withdrawing its ‘…

On 7 July, the Palestine Chronicle reported that the Palestinian ‘Great March of Return’ had taken place near the Gaza-Israel border for the 15th consecutive Friday. A Palestinian man was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, bringing the overall Great March death toll to 135.

Nearly 400 Palestinians were injured on 7 July, according to the Palestinian ministry of health. Overall, some 5,000 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli live fire and tear gas during the largely…

On 11 April, four defendants from Faslane Peace Camp were tried for aggravated trespass allegedly committed during last September’s week of action against the DSEI arms fair in London.

Most of the 102 activists arrested during the week of action were charged with highway obstruction. The Faslane four were the only protesters to be charged with aggravated trespass, even though their blockading actions were identical to those of many of the others arrested.

The Faslane…

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) occupied the central lobby of the Westminster parliament in London just before midday on 18 April. DPAC taped out a ‘crime scene’ with the outline of a ‘murder victim’ laid on the floor. They demanded the scrapping of Universal Credit, a working-age benefit. DPAC claim it produces ‘crimes against claimants’, including 160,000 children losing free school meals and the increased use of foodbanks in areas where it’s been introduced.

After the…

On 13 March, two anti-fracking campaigners were found guilty of highway obstruction at a site near Kirby Misperton village, North Yorkshire. Dr Julia Collings and Ronnie Hollarand were each given six months’ conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs of £220. In October 2017, the pair had occupyied a three-sided tower in the middle of the road, blocking access to the proposed fracking site, as part of a long-running campaign of nonviolent direct action.

This verdict followed a…

On 21 March, an Israeli military juvenile court in Ofer in the Occupied Territories sentenced Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi to eight months in prison (with a further eight months suspended) and fined her 5,000 shekels ($1,440). She had agreed to a deal where she pleaded guilty to four of the 12 charges she faced, according to her lawyer.

Ahed, then 16, had been filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the…

The crown prosecution service (CPS) broke off proceedings against 13 activists awaiting trial for obstructing the highway while protesting against the DSEI arms fair in London last September. Five protesters, from Faslane Peace Camp, are still scheduled to go on trial on 11–12 April.

The dropping of the cases followed the acquittals, on 7 February, of four Christian peace activists, and the dismissal of charges the next day against four Quaker abseilers, by a different district…

On 18 March, French prosecutors finally admitted that they were relying on information supplied by British undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, in a case against the Tarnac group of French activists, in a trial due to close just after PN goes to press.

Kennedy, who used the name ‘Mark Stone’ while undercover, was sent to France to spy on the Tarnac group in June 2008 as an officer of the UK national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU), according to secret NPOIU documents…

On 5 February, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, visited Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli prison.

Ahed, then 16, was filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank on 15 December. Just an hour earlier, she’d learned that her 14-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi, had been shot in the face at close range by Israeli soldiers with a rubber-coated metal bullet.…

On 24 January, Peter Anderson and Jamie Watson were both found guilty of ‘breach of the peace’ at Dumbarton justice of the peace court for blockading the Coulport nuclear weapons store during the Trident Ploughshares summer disarmament camp last July.

Two Finns who were arrested and charged with them, Esa Noresvuo and Kaj Raninen, did not turn up. Peter and Jamie accepted prosecution evidence that none of the four who locked-on across an access road to Coulport had moved when asked to…

In January and early February, there were acquittals for 12 of the 102 people arrested during the set-up of the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair last September (PN 2610–2611).

Most of the 102 were charged with obstruction of the highway, some with aggravated trespass, and a few were released without…

On 10 November, a trial at Stratford magistrates court in London descended into farce when the prosecution declined to show police bodycam video evidence because it ‘showed nothing’ and dropped the case. This was the first trial arising from a week of action in September aimed at disrupting the DSEI arms fair held in London’s Docklands (PN 2610–2611).

Chris Maunder was facing the most serious charge brought against any of the 102 DSEI arrestees: assaulting a police…