The trial of six anti-genocide activists in London has once again exposed close coordination between the Starmer regime with the organs of the illegitimate state of Israel. Specifically, during the trial of Palestine Action activists known as the Filton 24 it has been revealed that Israeli-owned arms company Elbit had access to evidence the activists’ defence barristers did not. Concerningly, evidence bagged by the Met Police was found in a safe on Elbit’s premises just days before the trial started.

Moreover, prosecution witnesses had to change their statements mid-trial – because body-cam footage showed what they had previously said was false. All this raises serious questions about the conduct of the British state and its possible collusion with Israel during and before the activists’ trial.

Anti-genocide activists

The six activists on trial are members of the Filton 24 Palestine Action group and have been held in prison for more than a year. Many are facing delays of one or even two years more before their cases are heard. They were arrested last year before Starmer proscribed Palestine Action, a non-violent campaign group, as a terrorist organisation in July 2025. None of the six have been charged with terrorist offences, although the government is still applying terrorism legislation to hold them beyond the 180-day statutory limit.

The activists have denied charges of criminal damage and, in one case, of grievous bodily harm, levelled at them.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) claims that the six activists used violence against police and security guards, releasing a heavily-edited body-cam video before the trial purportedly showing an attack. However, the defence was not allowed to release its own footage. The video is unclear, and it’s difficult to identify the attackers or their targets.

Critics argue the government is trying to sway public opinion about the trial and its decision to ban Palestine Action.

Accusations over evidence

However, crucially the body-cam footage is drawing attention to concerns about the handling of evidence in the case, and acts of possible collusion with Israel.

As journalist Jonathan Cook has pointed out, for over a year, the police and the prosecution allowed Elbit — a military technology company co-founded by the Israeli government — to have unrestricted access to video evidence central to the case against the Filton 24 activists currently on trial, among other materials. Cook noted:

the “full” footage – that is, the footage shown to the jurors, but not the public – is far from full. Elbit, the police and the prosecutors appear to have colluded in keeping some of the footage out of the trial. One can only speculate about why they would wish to do this.

He then went on to list the following “key points about the video evidence”:

* The state initially failed to provide the defence lawyers with accurate plans of the Elbit factory site. It was eventually forced to submit revised plans that revealed previously missing CCTV camera locations.

* Conveniently, multiple cameras in an “alcove” area, where most of the confrontations took place, were not working, according to Elbit.

* In an email revealed in court, suggesting that Elbit may have edited the footage, a police officer in charge of handling the video evidence warned Elbit’s security manager: “There’s a huge opportunity for the defence counsel to use the gaps and jumps [in the footage] to their advantage”…

* Inexplicably, the police allowed Elbit to retain exclusive control over the camera footage for two days after the confrontation. Some of the other footage, from critically important cameras, was not sought by police until “much later”, according to a police investigator.

* In a further sign of collusion between the police and Elbit, it was revealed that during a search of the Filton premises last month, as the trial got underway, an Elbit safe was opened that contained Metropolitan Police evidence bags, holding USB sticks of security camera footage.

In other words, evidence collected and bagged by the police had been given over to Elbit, one of the parties involved in the trial, who had been allowed to keep it for more than a year.

Expressing his concerns on these issues, journalist and former British ambassador Craig Murray, said:

The last fact is simply astonishing. The evidence collected and apparently correctly bagged by the police had simply been handed over to Elbit, apparently for over a year. This is only a part of a much wider collusion between Elbit and the UK state, including the police…

It is hard to imagine a plainer admission that a serving British police officer saw her primary duty as helping Israel’s largest arms manufacturer to secure convictions, rather than establishing the truth…

It is also simply remarkable that the prosecution’s highly selective and edited video evidence has been put into the public domain and has notably affected the public narrative, but that the defence video evidence may not be made public.

Contradictions

Murray’s own summary of the exposures also notes that:

Every single prosecution witness who gave evidence about the melee was obliged to change their statement when confronted by the defence with video evidence which contradicted it. This included much more video than was released by the prosecution.

This is because claims by police and security guards about who was holding weapons and who attacked who is consistently contradicted by the video evidence:

• The first sledgehammer shown in the footage is in the hands of a security guard – confirmed by testimony in court.
• In his testimony security guard Nigel Shaw, who had claimed he was hit by the actionists, was forced to agree that, “no one in the building had struck him”.
• Guard Angelo Volante had claimed an activist had held an angle-grinder during the confrontation but had to concede that the video showed that he, not the activist, was wielding the tool and also holding a hammer in the other hand and later a whip.
• Footage shows Volante grabbing a sledgehammer from a activist Zoe Rogers and pointing it at her.
• Another activist had to defend himself with a sledgehammer from a guard coming at him with a sledgehammer.

Real Media notes that Rogers’s barrister:

suggested [Volante] had swung his sledgehammer at Zoe, showing some more footage, in which the shadow of the hammer appeared as though raised, and Zoe covering her face in response. [Volante] had already accepted that he had kicked [another defendant Jordan] Devlin, and he now acceded that Zoe might have ‘thought’ that the hammer would hit her, but maintained he hadn’t swung it at her.

The evidence also appeared to show that Volante may used a sledgehammer on Devlin and bitten him on the neck, though Volante denied causing bite marks found on Devlin’s neck after Volante put him in a choke hold that Volante admitted in court was potentially dangerous. Devlin suffered serious injuries, according to a an examination after his arrest:

his “shoulder tricep area was swollen” and there were ”injuries to both wrists and his right cheek, a bump on his head, black right eye, bruised shins, thighs, and left arm, a bruised right elbow, and his left pectoral”

‘Unreliable witnesses’

Murray noted:

What is evident from these exchanges is that the security guards and police are unreliable witnesses.

It is not merely that their evidence differs from what is shown by the video cameras.

It is that, consistently, their sworn evidence is untrue in a way that always makes the Palestine Action activists more aggressive, and themselves more passive, than in fact was the case.

The criminal trial overlapped with the High Court’s judicial review of the legality of Starmer’s proscription of Palestine Action. In this, the state removed the original judge at the last moment and replaced him with a panel of three judges. All of these judges have links to Israel.

Of course, the British state’s collusion with Israel was on the record before. For example, the CPS and the Attorney General’s Office had previously been consulting with the Israeli embassy – again, over the Filton 24 anti-genocide activists. Similar collusion has also happened past earlier cases. Additionally, the court has allowed police officers and security guards to change their sworn statements after video evidence showed them to be false.

The Starmer regime has no boundaries it will not cross in its eagerness to defend and support Israel and its interests at any cost.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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