LONDON: UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has been accused of running a “cynical media campaign” against Palestine Action that breaches her duties over a court case challenging the group’s banning.
Lawyers representing Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori sent a letter to the government’s legal department making the accusation, The Guardian reported on Friday.
Ammori has been given permission for a judicial review of Cooper’s decision in early July to ban the group under the UK Terrorism Act.
In the letter, Ammori’s lawyers from the firm Birnberg Peirce argue that Cooper’s public statements, widely reported in the media, are at odds with her disclosures in the review case at the High Court.
“At the centre of your client’s media campaign is an attempt to persuade the public that Palestine Action was proscribed for reasons which she is unable to reveal publicly and which are centred on violence and injuries against people,” the lawyers said.
“These claims about the reason for Proscription Review Group’s recommendation for the proscription of Palestine Action are misleading in light of open (public) disclosure.”
In announcing Palestine Action’s proscription, Cooper had said publicly that the group was planning violent acts to further its cause.
But she refused to disclose the nature of these planned attacks or how authorities discovered them.
Ammori’s lawyers said: “It is clear from the open disclosure that the basis for the recommendation was serious damage to property caused by Palestine Action and not violence against people.
“Indeed the central advice to your client was that proscribing Palestine Action would advance ‘the deterrent message of stating clearly that serious damage to property to advance a cause, amounts to terrorism regardless of the cause.’”
Some of the evidence at the judicial review hearing was kept private from Ammori and her legal team.
But Birnberg Peirce’s lawyers have argued that Cooper’s references to secret information regarding Palestine Action must be heard in the review.
“Anything that your client feels able to share with the media should be in your client’s open case, even by way of gist,” they wrote.
Ammori’s lawyers also highlighted an opinion piece authored by Cooper in The Observer. In the piece, the home secretary referred to “disturbing information given to me that covered ideas and planning for future attacks (by Palestine Action).”
Yet this information was left out of open court in the judicial hearing, as were allegations made by Cooper and Prime Minister Keir Starmer that Palestine Action targeted Jewish businesses.
Those allegations relate to a Jewish business operated by a landlord of a subsidiary of Elbit, the Israeli arms company, a fact that Cooper was “well aware” of, the letter said.
It added: “This cynical media campaign reflects a fundamental lack of respect for court proceedings, and either indicates an attempt by your client to influence media coverage through assertions which she cannot evidence, or is reflective of a serious breach of her duty of candour in these proceedings.”
The letter continued: “The proper place for your client to advance her case is in court. Your client’s approach in relation to briefing the media with a wholly different basis for proscription is entirely improper and a breach of her duty to the court.
“If your client has evidence to support her assertions, this ought to have been disclosed. As she has not, she must cease her misleading campaign immediately.”
