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Five Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed for several years each after appearing at Southwark Crown Court in London on Thursday, in a case that a UN representative believes may “violate the UK’s obligations under international human rights law”.
Roger Hallam, 57, Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 34, and Cressida Gethin, 22, were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for organising direct action protests to block the M25 during a zoom call in November 2022.
Hallam was jailed for five years and his co-accused were all jailed for four years, prompting audible gasps from the public gallery.
During the trial, the court heard the group tried to recruit activists to take part in the protests, that, according to the prosecution, caused disruption leading to a “notional economic loss” of almost £750,000, in addition to a cost of almost £1 million to the police, the Guardian earlier reported.
The length of the sentences are unprecedented for climate activists in the UK. Until now, the longest punishments handed down for peaceful protest were two years and seven months, and three years, for Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland, who were found guilty of causing a public nuisance after scaling a bridge and raising a Just Stop Oil banner on the Dartford Crossing in October 2023.
UN Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst, claims the “purely punitive and repressive nature of the multi-year prison sentences” handed down Thursday may violate the UK’s obligations under international human rights law.
Passing sentence on the protestors, judge Christopher Hehir said the offending was “very serious” and that lengthy custodial sentences must follow.
The naturalist and TV broadcaster, Chris Packham, who appeared in court today in support of the protestors, branded the case against them a “sham”, and said the courts should not be “corrupted” by the fossil fuel industry.
Packham urged supporters of the defendants to gather near the court at 4pm and is expected to make a public call for a meeting with Attorney General, Richard Hermer KC, calling for an end to the silencing and jailing of people who “shout ‘fire’ because there’s a fire”.
Citing the overcrowding crisis that has prompted the Labour government to controversially order the release of thousands of prisoners, he asked: “Why would we possibly want to be locking up five peaceful climate protestors?
“They have just been through the sham of a court case where they were not allowed to say why they were protesting, and this has aggrieved the UN,” Packham said, adding: “They have criticised the UK government and said that basically it’s transgressing the UK’s obligations when it comes to upholding human rights.”
The sentencing followed a chaotic two-and-a-half-week trial in which four of the defendants were arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court after repeatedly ignoring a ruling from Judge Christopher Hehir prohibiting them from using the climate breakdown as a defence for their actions. The Judge also ordered, a few days into the trial on 2 July, the arrest of 11 protestors outside the court who were silently holding placards displaying the words, “Juries deserve to hear the whole truth” and “Juries have the absolute right to acquit a defendant on their conscience”.
The defendants claimed they were not granted a fair trial after Judge Hehir ruled that evidence about climate change could not feature in their defence, although each was allowed to give their “political and philosophical beliefs” about the climate crisis.
“The views of any defendant – however sincerely held, and whether or not you agree with them – about manmade climate change, and what should or should not be done about it, are entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not each is guilty or not guilty,” Hehir told jurors, the Guardian earlier reported. The judge also prevented defendants from presenting to the court a 250-page bundle of evidence relating to the climate crisis.
Professor Bill McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, criticised both the trial and verdict as a “farce” and said they “mark a low point in British justice and they were an assault on free speech”.
“The judge’s characterisation of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance,” he added.
Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government, added: “This is so disgraceful. We are all hoping that the change in UK Govt will also change the situation in our courts.”
The UN’s Forst says the sentences issued Thursday will inevitably have a deterring or “chilling” effect not only on climate activists, but on anyone who considers joining a demonstration in the UK.
However, Forst also said that many climate activists will keep protesting if governments continue to make decisions that contradict the recommendations of scientists, such as issuing new oil and gas licenses.
“The climate crisis poses a well documented and terrifying threat to life, to humanity, to our planet,” he told Byline Times, adding that the UK “may end up filling up its prisons with the very people who realise that and try to change this deadly path”.
“Regardless of what one may think of the disruption protests like road blockades can cause,” he said, “these are peaceful protests, and not only should everyone feel concerned that these can result in years in a prison cell, but also members of the international community, including myself in my role as Special Rapporteur, should be doing everything they can to sound the alarm and to prevent this from happening.”
Tim Crosland, a former legal advisor to the National Crime Agency, director of the climate justice charity Plan B, and one of the campaign organisers for Defend Our Juries agrees with Forst’s assessment.
He described the Just Stop Oil’s protestors’ trial as a “sham” and suggested that their treatment is in violation of “the right to a fair trial” under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is signed up.
Crosland went on to accuse the judge of wrongly characterising the climate crisis as “a matter of opinion or belief”, as if it were the subjective opinion of the defendants as opposed to an objective reality, and branded the ruling to deny them the right to defend themselves as “absurd”.
“In every system of law and morality, it’s a defence to take reasonable action to prevent a far greater harm,” he added.
Hehir is not the first judge to rule that the climate crisis as “irrelevant” to criminal trials and comes after months of crackdowns on protestors.
In March, the Appeals court ruled that defendants’ “beliefs and motivation” do not constitute lawful excuse for damaging property – effectively removing one of the last defences available to them. And in May, a a report by the Government’s advisor on political violence, Lord Walney, suggested protest groups like Just Stop Oil, and Palestine Action, be banned in similar ways to terrorist organisations.
In March 2023, Judge Silas Reid imprisoned three Insulate Britain activists for talking about the climate crisis and fuel poverty in their closing statements.
Amy Pritchard, a horticulturalist from Liverpool, was jailed by Judge Reid for 10 months in June 2024 after being found guilty of criminal damage for cracking a window at JP Morgan Bank, which is known to be the biggest funder of fossil fuels in the world.
During the trial Judge Reid said: “Whether climate change is as dangerous as each of the defendants may clearly and honestly believe, or is not, is irrelevant and does not form any part of the circumstances of the damage.” The Judge also threatened the jury with prosecution if they used their conscience to acquit the climate activist.
Later this month, former teacher Caren Wildlin faces up to two years jail following a guilty verdict for climbing on top of a train transporting wood pellets to Drax power station.
The power station near Selby, in Yorkshire, burns 6.5 million tonnes of wood pellets and emits over 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Under international rules the UK doesn’t have to count these emissions.
Drax Group also receives more than £2 million in green subsidies a day funded by UK energy bill payers.
The jury in Wildlin’s case was instructed by the Judge that ‘moral grounds’ we not admissible as evidence.