A JURY at the Old Bailey has been discharged after failing to reach verdicts on any charge against seven Palestine Action activists accused of organising the August 2024 action at the Elbit Systems weapons factory at Filton, near Bristol.
Judge Patrick Field discharged the jury yesterday after more than 37 hours of deliberation.
The trial opened on 22 June and the jury first retired on 6 August.
A mention hearing has been listed for 14 September, when prosecutors are expected to indicate whether they will seek a third trial.
The defendants are Madeleine Norman, 31, and Hannah Davidson, 53, both of Edinburgh; Teuta Hoxha, 30, of Southwark, south-east London; Aleksandra Herbich, 42, of Brent, north-west London; Ian Sanders, 47, of Leamington Spa; William Plastow, 35, of Manchester; and Julija Brigadirova, 34, of Chorlton, Manchester.
They faced charges of criminal damage, and all but Plastow were also charged with violent disorder.
Field acquitted Plastow of violent disorder during the trial. All denied wrongdoing.
None of the seven were at the factory on 6 August 2024.
The prosecution case was that they had helped organise or facilitate the action by compiling equipment lists, carrying out reconnaissance and buying tools used by others, and rested on encrypted communications and material said to show preparation.
The defence argued that association with Palestine Action does not establish criminal liability, and that the Crown had not proved the defendants intentionally assisted or encouraged any offence.
The case is one strand of the Filton prosecutions.
In the first trial, all six defendants were acquitted of aggravated burglary and the jury could not agree on other counts. At the retrial of those counts, four were convicted of criminal damage and two acquitted.
The four were then sentenced on the basis of a judicial finding that their offending had a terrorist connection, although the jury had been asked to decide criminal charges and not whether the defendants were terrorists.
Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2025.
Cage International said the outcome was ‘the latest chapter in a prosecution that has put Palestine activism on trial’ and that the first Filton prosecutions had been used as a precedent ‘that organising resistance to Britain’s complicity in genocide can be treated as terrorism’.
It called the result ‘another embarrassing defeat for the establishment, which has thrown all its resources into convicting them.’
Former ambassador Craig Murray wrote on X, ‘The government’s entire narrative for the proscription of Palestine Action was based on an ‘escalating campaign of violence’.
‘There has only ever been one single conviction for PA violence, and that specifically without intent. On Filton, 19 violence charges failed. 46 of 51 charges have failed in total.’