Pro-Palestine activists 'didn't plan violence'

ALESTINE Action activists who allegedly used sledgehammers on security guards and police officers during a breakin at an Israel-based defence firm’s UK site “didn’t want any harm to happen’, one of the accused said.

- TED HENNESSEY wdp@reachplccom

Charlotte Head, 29, is accused of being involved in a demonstration at an Elbit Systems factory in Bristol in the early hours of August 6 last year, along with Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin. Head, giving evidence at a trial at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday, said before the breakin, the six of them agreed they did not want to use violence.

She added: “We didn’t want any harm to happen”

Asked by her barrister Rajiv Menon KC if there was anything else they talked about beforehand, Head said the idea was to appear too much “hassle” for security guards, so they would not intervene, rather than “terrify” them.