Five Palestine Action activists face being sentenced as terrorists after they sprayed red paint and cracked windows at a branch of Barclays bank to protest the company’s links to an Israeli weapons manufacturer.
The move comes despite the fact they were not found guilty of a terrorism offence and the jury was not informed about a potential terror sentencing.
Brendon O’Hagan and Mohammed Malik, both 28; Amanda Kelly and Hmeera Atiqnisar, both 31; and Alma Yaniv, 70, were convicted of criminal damage after causing an estimated £212k of damage to the branch in Burnley in August 2024.
It was one of numerous actions against Barclays urging the company to stop holding shares in Elbit Systems, which is Israel’s largest arms manufacturer and has supplied its military with weapons throughout the genocide in Gaza.
Activists claimed victory in October 2024 after it was revealed that Barclays had sold its shares in Elbit.
The bank was named in a July 2025 UN report of companies complicit in Israel’s genocide because it had been underwriting Israeli treasury bonds. Recent data shows Barclays has now stopped doing so.
After their trial at Preston Crown Court, judge Philip Parry told defence lawyers that he intended to consider a “terrorist connection”. He referenced the unprecedented decision last month by Justice Johnson to sentence four other Palestine Action activists as terrorists.
“We have not been charged with, nor convicted of, any terrorism offence,” said Malik. “At no point during our trial did the prosecution seek to pursue anything to do with terrorism, and the jury were kept completely in the dark and were not told that if convicted, we could be sentenced as terrorists.”
The Home Office did not reference the Barclays case when justifying its decision to designate Palestine Action a terrorist group in July 2025.
In 2023, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion staged a similar protest against Barclays, breaking windows at the bank’s Canary Wharf headquarters and causing £500k worth of damage. But they were never treated as terrorists and avoided jail.
Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, said: “When judge Johnson sentenced four of the Filton 25 as terrorists for destroying 40 Israeli weapons, including quadcopter drones, he opened the door to prosecuting protestors for one charge at court, whilst secretly planning to sentence them as terrorists.”
Your Party parliamentary leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote on X: “We are witnessing the destruction of decades of legal protections and democratic principles, and for what? So the British government can maintain and hide its atrocious complicity in genocide.”
“The misuse of counter-terrorism powers in this country is getting completely out of hand,” said Tom Southerden, Amnesty International UK’s law and human rights director.
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