New Delhi: Sally Rooney and Greta Thunberg are among around 100 public figures who have decried terrorism sentences against four human rights activists who raided the United Kingdom site of an Israel-based defence firm.The BBC reports that Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani, had broken into the Elbit Systems factory near Bristol in August 2024. The move was a response to the UK government’s stance on Israel, which has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza for close to three years now.The four belong to the group Palestine Action which was controversially proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government in July last year.Labour and Green Party leaders have called the sentences shocking and heart-wrenching. This is the first time that convictions for criminal damage have been classified as being connected to terrorism, BBC notes.While the jury found them guilty of the crime of causing criminal damages, it was not told that the four risked extended prison sentences under terror provisions – despite not being charged with such offences.Their full statement, which appeared on the UK website Artists for Palestine, is produced below in full. §We, the undersigned, urge you to drop the use of the ‘terrorism connection’ in the sentencing of Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona (Ellie) Kamio, and Fatema Zainab Rajwani on June 12th 2026.The four defendants were not charged with terrorism offences. They were not tried under terrorism laws. The jury was never informed of any proposed ‘terrorism connection’ during the trial and did not find any of the defendants guilty of any terror-related crimes. The proposed ‘terrorism connection’ is founded simply on a guilty verdict in relation to criminal damage. To bypass the jury and sentence a group of protesters as terrorists would constitute an extremely grave miscarriage of justice, with consequences far beyond this case alone.It is a consensus view within the international legal community that Israel’s campaign of mass killing in Gaza has crossed the threshold of genocide. International law prohibits arms exports to any nation committing genocide or other atrocity crimes, but the UK has continued to supply Israel with weaponry. The defendants in this trial tried every means at their disposal to call for an end to this illegal arms supply: they marched in the streets, wrote to their MPs and joined university encampments. But the export of lethal weapons, and the mass killings they facilitated, continued.Finally, in August 2024, the defendants took action. They entered a UK facility run by Israel’s largest arms producer, Elbit Systems, and dismantled weapons themselves. Their actions may well have saved lives. And yet, when facing trial, the defendants were not permitted to explain their motivations to the jury. Deprived of the full moral and humanitarian context, the jury found four of the six defendants guilty of ordinary criminal offences.The conscientious motives of these activists – suppressed throughout the trial – may now be brought against them at the sentencing stage through the use of a ‘terrorism connection’. The only stated basis for this connection is that the defendants were ‘attempting to influence the Israeli government by restricting their access to weapons’. But virtually every international humanitarian organisation, including a group of expert UN Special Rapporteurs, has called for the same thing: the restriction of Israel’s access to weapons, in accordance with international law.In this case, the purported ‘terrorism connection’ could extend the defendants’ prison sentences, require them to ‘rescind’ their deepest moral beliefs in order to be eligible for parole, and impose harsh restrictions on their freedoms even after their release. Never before has a link to terrorism been imposed at the sentencing stage in a criminal damage case. The implications for civil liberties in Britain are difficult to overstate.Over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including over 20,000 children. The Filton activists acted to uphold international law and defend human life. To sentence them on the basis of a ‘terrorism connection’ would not only be unjust and cruel: it would gravely undermine the right to protest and the impartiality of the judicial system itself. We demand that you reconsider before it is too late.