British newspaper The Guardian reported that a troubling email was sent on September 9, 2024, by the Attorney General’s Office to Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK with the subject matter titled: “Crown Prosecution Service/counterterrorism police contact details.”
The email sent by Nicola Smith, the head of international law at the Attorney General’s Office, was sent just 11 days after she had held a meeting with Israel’s Deputy Ambassador, Grudsky Ekstein.
Experts and legal teams involved in defending activists on trail, such as Palestine Action’s Filton 18, now fear the Israeli government may be directly interfering in ongoing legal cases with assistance from the Attorney General’s Office.
Last August, 10 Palestine Action activists were arrested under the Terrorism Act after a protest at an Israeli weapons factory, and in November a further eight were arrested under the act in relation to the same incident.
Lydia Dagostino, from Kellys Solicitors, who represents some Palestine Action activists, said: “The information disclosed in response to an FoI request clearly raises questions and needs further investigation.
“Why, for example, did the Attorney General’s Office provide the contact details for the Crown Prosecution Service, an independent body, to the Israelis? What further exchanges followed and was there discussions about ongoing criminal prosecutions?”
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Anas Mustapha, head of public advocacy at CAGE International said: “The Zionist regime’s interference in British policing and the judiciary is not an isolated act — it is part of a broader, dangerous campaign to criminalise dissent, suppress the anti-war movement, and entrench authoritarianism in order to protect the Western colonial outpost that is Israel.
“This evidence of political interference is deeply concerning and amounts to an abuse of process. Every additional day the Filton 18 remain detained is a violation of their fundamental rights. They must be freed, and the case against them must be dropped immediately.”
Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, said: “The timing of this correspondence coincides with the ongoing investigation into Palestine Action activists accused of dismantling the site of Israel’s biggest arms producer.
“It seems apparent that the Attorney General’s Office has facilitated foreign interference in this case and potentially other ongoing criminal cases.”
The Filton 18
In August 2024, six actionists belonging to Palestine Action drove a modified prison van into a research, development, and manufacturing hub of an arms firm called Elbit System’s located in Filton, Bristol.
Once inside, the six dismantled Israeli weapons, including, according to Palestine Action, the “same model of quadcopter drones used by the Israeli military to mimic the sounds of women and children crying, to lure Palestinians and kill them.”
The action allegedly cost Israel’s largest weapons firm over £1million in damage.
After the six were arrested at the scene, four more were rounded up by armed counter-terrorism police, in different parts of the country.
All were remanded in prison. Whilst under arrest, each of the 10 were detained without charge for approximately a week and interrogated repeatedly under the Terrorism Act, according to Palestine Action’s website.
Each of the Filton actionists was eventually charged with non-terror offences.
In November, there were further raids, with anti-terror laws once again being wielded, and 8 more activists subsequently remanded in custody, in relation to the same Filton action, taking the total to 18.
Clare Rogers, the mother of one of Zoë Rogers, one of the jailed activists explained why her daughter took the action she did amid a genocide in Gaza.
“My 21-year-old daughter Zoë has been in prison for 8 months without trial and counting. She took action against Elbit because she couldn’t sit on her hands and do nothing while her government committed war crimes by supplying arms to Israel.
“It’s sickening to learn that the brutal repression she and the Filton18 are experiencing was planned in secret conversations between our government and the Israeli embassy. It seems our government is prioritising a foreign weapons manufacturer over the rights of ordinary citizens.
“In a just nation, the Filton18 case would be thrown out as soon as this political interference came to light.”
In January 2025, four UN special rapporteurs wrote to the UK government to raise concerns about the misuse of counter-terrorism measures to target Palestine Action activists and impose harsher detention conditions on them.
Despite now facing non-terror related charges, including aggravated burglary and criminal damage, the 18 are being held under “counter-terror” powers until their trial in November.
While the defendants were not charged under the Terrorism Act, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a press release that it would argue in court that the offences have a “terrorist connection”, which could aggravate their sentences.
