Four Palestine Action activists jailed over Elbit factory raid in Bristol

A London judge handed four Palestine Action activists a combined 22 years and four months in prison after a raid that wrecked an Elbit Systems site near Bristol and, in the court’s view, crossed from protest into politically motivated sabotage. Judge Jeremy Johnson said the case had a “terrorism connection” and treated that as an aggravating factor.

Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Zainab Rajwani were sentenced over the August 2024 break-in at Elbit Systems UK’s facility in Filton, at Aztec West Business Park. The site opened in July 2023 as a research, development and manufacturing hub for the Israeli defence company, and it had already been repeatedly targeted by Palestine Action before later closing in 2025 after sustained campaigning.

The court heard the raid caused more than £1 million in damage. Elbit said insurers paid almost £1.2 million to cover the losses, while specialist military drone equipment, IT systems and computers were destroyed. Corner received seven years and eight months, Kamio and Head each got five years, and Rajwani received four years and eight months. All four will also spend another year on licence after release.

Corner was also convicted of grievous bodily harm after prosecutors said he struck a police officer with a sledgehammer. Two other defendants were acquitted when the criminal damage verdicts were returned in May. Johnson also cited the defendants’ previous good character as a substantial mitigating factor, but he still imposed long terms after hearing that prosecutors said the raid was meant to influence British government policy toward Israel.

The case lands in the middle of Britain’s increasingly fraught struggle over Palestine Action, protest rights and the legal reach of terrorism law. The Home Secretary proscribed the group in 2025 under the Terrorism Act 2000 after ministers linked it to a separate incident at RAF Brize Norton, but London’s High Court ruled in February 2026 that the ban was unlawful because it breached the government’s own policy and disproportionately interfered with freedom of expression and assembly. For Britain’s protest movement, the sentencing marks a sharp line between political dissent and criminal direct action, and it is likely to shape how courts treat future attacks on defence-linked sites.