After more than 17 hours of deliberation, the jury at Birmingham Crown Court was discharged after failing to reach a verdict.

A jury has refused to convict four pro-Palestine activists accused of criminal damage at a West Midlands arms factory said to produce military aircraft parts for Israel.

Iain Evans, 33, Hana-Yun Stevens, 24, Bea Sherman, 23, and Hisham Alkhamezi, 23, were charged with criminal damage after breaking into a Wolverhampton facility owned by US-based aerospace firm Moog in August last year.

After more than 17 hours of deliberation, the jury at Birmingham Crown Court was discharged after failing to reach a verdict.

During the trial, footage was shown of activists driving a Land Rover through the factory’s front gates before smashing solar panels and skylight windows on the roof, Declassified UK reported.

The four defendants admitted to breaking into the facility but argued that their actions were not unlawful since they were seeking to save lives by stopping the shipment of components for aircraft used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Prosecutors said the case “is not about Israel, it’s not about Palestine… It’s simply about whether they unlawfully damaged property”.

The jury was shown a social media post explaining the reasoning behind the action where the four defendants all wore t-shirts featuring the names of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes, including the author Refaat Alareer.

Defence counsel Mira Hammad told the court there was “no mystery about why the [four defendants] were there”. It was “on their t-shirts. It’s right there in… the tweet [discussing] military aircraft parts to Israel”, she added.

Evans, who used to work in the aerospace sector, told the court: “We believed the longer we stayed up there, the more lives we would save. The idea was that the longer we stay on the roof, the longer the factory would be shut down.”

After the verdict was delivered, a one-minute silence was held outside the courthouse for those killed in Gaza.

All four defendants were granted bail until a further hearing on 3 July, while the Crown Prosecution Service decides whether to seek a retrial.

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