Police ban Palestine Action from Parliament protest

British police have taken the unusual step of banning a planned protest outside Parliament by the group Palestine Action.

The decision coincides with government considerations to proscribe the organisation as a terrorist entity.

The prohibition on Monday's parliament demonstration follows an incident last week where two Palestine Action members said they broke into a military base.

Video posted by the group showed two protesters riding electric scooters towards the planes on the runway at RAF Brize Norton on Wednesday.

They then used “repurposed fire extinguishers to spray red paint into the turbine engines”.

The group said they also caused further damage with crowbars.

open image in gallery

In response to the police ban, the pro-Palestinian group announced it would relocate its protest to Trafalgar Square, just outside the designated police exclusion zone.

The potential proscription would effectively ban Palestine Action, placing it on a par with groups such as al-Qaeda or ISIS.

Since the onset of the conflict in Gaza, the organisation has consistently targeted defence firms and other companies in Britain with perceived links to Israel.

London's Metropolitan Police said late on Sunday that it would impose an exclusion zone for a protest planned by Palestine Action outside the Houses of Parliament – a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.

open image in gallery

"The right to protest is essential and we will always defend it, but actions in support of such a group go beyond what most would see as legitimate protest," Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said.

"We have laid out to Government the operational basis on which to consider proscribing this group."

Sir Mark earlier expressed his “shock and frustration” at the planned protest.

Palestine Action's members are alleged to have caused millions of pounds of criminal damage and assaulted a police officer with a sledgehammer, Sir Mark said.

Some 81 organisations have been proscribed under the 2000 Act, including Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas and al Qaida, far-right groups such as National Action, and Russian private military company the Wagner Group.