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More jail terms for Gaza protesters

Min Donny | 27.03.2010 14:16 | Palestine | Repression | Social Struggles

26th March 2010 – Lizzie Cocker in Isleworth

Police hide video evidence from defence lawyers.

Two more youngsters charged with violent disorder during last year’s protests against Israel’s two-week massacre of the Gazan people have been handed harsh jail terms.

Judge Denniss at Isleworth Crown Court sentenced Scott McPherson to two years and Yahia Tebani to 12 months.

Ibrahim Obeseyah received a 12-month suspended sentence and 150 hours unpaid work.

Four other hearings also took place with two cases being adjourned until late April. The verdict of the others had not been confirmed as the Star went to press.

Protesters gathered inside and outside the court to show solidarity with the families of the defendants.

The defendants’ families stressed that, despite the abundance of CCTV footage, the police brutality which provoked the reaction of protesters had been ignored when the sentences were handed out.

Mr McPherson has been forced to leave his five-month-old son and, like Mr Tebani, is unable to continue with his university studies.

His mother Linda McPherson said: “He was demonstrating at the Israeli embassy standing up for the people of Gaza and the police were antagonistic and violent.

“A year later he was out shopping and undercover police came from all directions and pounced on him and then arrested him.

“Regardless of what this country says, you have not got freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate and protest against what’s happening in other parts of the world.”

Mr Tebani was 17 at the time he was captured on CCTV throwing a stick in the direction of police guarding the embassy.

His brother Hamza said: “We have lost faith in the law, this is how I feel.

“Nobody mentioned anything about why he took a stick and waved it. No-one spoke about injured people being refused through police lines to get to the ambulance.”

One-hundred-and-nineteen predominantly young Muslims were arrested after the protests. Seventy-nine have since been charged and so far 24 have been sent to prison. The sentencing of the remaining defendants continues.

The British Muslim Initiative has instructed a lawyer to take the cases to appeal.

President Mohamad Sawalha said: “They are damaging the idea of cohesion. The Muslim community is really feeling very angry against these charges because it’s not acceptable that a young Muslim or non-Muslim who just threw an empty bottle at the police is sentenced to two years.”


www.gazademosupport.org.uk

Min Donny

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

this is just the beginning

27.03.2010 15:48

this is just the beginning. the police are picking off all those who dare to be militantly opposed to the oppression that is necessary to maintain their fucked up system. we need to open our eyes. we need to stand up. we need to effectively fight this. they're picking off the radical muslim youth. they're going for antifacists who are prepared to physically back up their rhetoric. they've come for the AR movement. don't wait for it to be you.

fightback


thank you for informing us, an important warning to those with a conscience

27.03.2010 17:26

it's clear that the targetting of serious peaceful protest with violence arrest and vilifiication with the corporate owned media in accordance with the government has accelerated greatly in recent times and we all need to be vary weary about everything that we do, and draw attention to these POLITICAL PRSONERS! As for the reactionary/right wing fascist coach potatos posting the last two comments why don't you just crawl back into your holes, what makes you think we need you to regurgitate the establishment view?

another


Not accurate

27.03.2010 20:23

If i understand it, the guy wasn't accused at throwing an empty bottle at the police, he was accused of throwing an empty PLASTIC bottle at the gates.
It's not fair, it ain't right that they got these punishments,
the sticks we're talking about weren't broomsticks, they are about the thickness of a pencil!
I was there, I saw the police attacking us, I saw the police pushing everyone away from the gates to the otherside, we we're squeezed onto one another and it was only a matter of time before something like that was going to happen, people we're angry, very angry, and the cops were being very very provokative. and you know what else:
If it weren't for them we could of stopped the Gaze raids, we had enough people to storm the embassy, and on this one occasion we had an ability to stop a genocide, if it weren't for the police a lot more people would of been alive in Gaza today!
So a shop window was smashed, big fucking deal, we're talking about the deaths of our brothers and sisters and fellow human beings.

The moral thing for the police to do in that time, was obviously to help us, but they chose to protect the embassy, they are complicit, and not a single army officer, not a single politician or solider is going to go down to prison, for the much more serious crime of a massacre, so with all due respect to fucking Starbucks and the fucking cops, who gives a shit?

a Jew


@a jew

27.03.2010 20:55

I can't believe you are that dumb. The police were there to protect you, not the embassy. If you stuck one foot onto their territory in mob format, then you would have been gunned down where you stood. Are you really that stupid not to get that in your head?
Do you actually believe the Israels would let a mob take over their embassy without using every bit of firepower they had? It would have been a massacre

Mccoy


Pissed off with intent

28.03.2010 02:48

Young, not all from the majority group, genuinely really pissed off and for good reason, and ready and willing to go a bit further than has been the excepted norm for protest in the uk over the last years, so its no wonder they've come down hard on them. I wasn't at the protests but talking to people about them afterwards it really sounded like there was something different in the air - real anger & frustration.

Peters Atlas


interesting times ahead on the inside

28.03.2010 08:15

i reckon life inside the prison system is going to get quite interesting in the next few years.

remember strangeways, remember the maze, remember how the 80's included a politicised and militant attitude spreading throughout prisons? educating each other, sharing support and resources working together.

what goes around comes around.

a handful of lifers have kept that flame alive, but its been faltering these last 20 years due to lack of numbers. those numbers are now heading our way thanks to the authoritarians in charge.

what isn't happening outside the prisons to any real degree - concerted communication, bonding, and solidarity between various strands of opposition to the state (muslim youth, anarchists, greens, and the rare few who are all three, just for some examples) - is highly likely to happen now on the inside now that we are to be sharing cells and exercise yards.

wonder how the state will try to counter it this time?

expect it will involve extra-repressive measures against individual prisoners, and hope that those of us on the outside are prepared and ready to support them as much as we possibly can.

ex-prisoner


@Peters Atlas

28.03.2010 10:08

"Young, not all from the majority group, genuinely really pissed off and for good reason, and ready and willing to go a bit further than has been the excepted norm for protest in the uk over the last years"

What is missing from this is the fact that many of these charges stem from reactions to the violence of the cops.

"The judge admitted in his summing-up of each of the cases that MEMO sat through that none of the young men had set out deliberately to cause any trouble and he accepted that none of the misconduct had been premeditated. He made reference to the fact that no weapons had been brought from home and that no disguises, such as balaclavas, had been worn and that essentially they had all just got caught up in the events of the day. He made the point that there seemed to be a type of "mass-hysteria" afflicting the crowd and that the protesters simply got caught up in the events"
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/446335.html

Yet despite this, he saw fit to use a tariff of sentencing devised by the Judges in the Bradford Riots.

We have already learnt that Jake Smith reacted after he was beaten by the cops, who then tried to suppress the evidence of his beating.
 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/03/448177.html
 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/03/448177.html?c=on#c245493

It was precisely because most of the young defendants have no history of attending protests and seeing how the cops routinely behave, that they find themselves in the dock. Had they more experience, they may well have been able to get a better defence than the old line of "its on video you might as well plead guilty to avoid a harsh sentence". The police provocation that played a major part in setting off many of the incidents was not taken into account.

viva viva Falestina!


I got a small fine for a similar offence in the 90s

28.03.2010 18:33

I got done for throwing a (glass) bottle at riot cops on one of the big demos in the 90s and got a small fine, along with several other people.

It does make you wonder why they are handing out such draconian sentences in this case.

anon


great job

29.03.2010 17:17

keep it up! We need more of this to succeed

paulo


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