THREE Palestine Action activists who stopped production at Leonardo’s Millbrook site in Southampton in November 2023 have finally begun a week-long trial at Winchester Crown Court.
On 16th November 2023, three Palestine Action activists scaled and occupied Southampton’s Leonardo UK facility.
Once on the roof, the activists began dismantling the factory, intending to sustain their occupation of the site for as long as possible to maximise disruption to the flow of arms to Israel.
Leonardo is the world’s 13th largest arms companies, with its UK subsidiary, Leonardo UK, maintaining multiple sites across Britain, including Southhampton’s Millbrook Industrial Estate.
Leonardo’s Southampton site specialises in producing thermal imaging technology for missile guidance systems to ‘increase target selection accuracy’.
Supporters of the Leonardo 3, campaigning with the group Stop Leonardo Genocide, note the likelihood of these products being used in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 73,010 people in Gaza, including more than 20,000 children:
‘These products fall under arms export licensing category ML5 (target acquisition, weapon control and countermeasure systems), and Leonardo UK holds four such ML5 licenses for exports to Israel (CAAT) – meaning almost certainly that Southampton-made imaging and targeting systems are used in Israel’s aerial assaults on Gaza.’
Last week, a coalition of local groups released a statement in support of the Leonardo 3: ‘Our communities wholeheartedly reject the companies who profit from the massacring of Palestinians.
‘Companies like Leonardo do not make us safer, but seek to entrench militarism and permanent misery for people living under occupation and surveillance by genocidal states like Israel.’
The groups urged local people to support the activists ‘however you can’.
