LONDON (AP) — A London judge sentenced four Palestine Action activists to several years in prison Friday for acting as terrorists when they raided an Israeli defense factory in the U.K. and smashed equipment with the intent of disrupting production of weapons they feared would kill people in Gaza.
The break-in at Elbit Systems caused 1.2 million pounds ($1.6 million) in damage and led to a clash with security guards and law enforcement that left a police officer with broken back.
Justice Jeremy Johnson ruled that the crime went beyond the criminal damage convictions of the four because they aimed to stop the defense company from operating or force the British government to stop its production, which he said gave the crime a “terrorist connection."
“Each defendant agreed to take part in high-level actions, and did so with the shared aim of shutting down Elbit and ending what they regarded as British complicity in Israeli war crimes,” Johnson said. “The action was designed to influence the U.K. government and also to intimidate a section of the public, and was for the purpose of advancing an ideological or political cause.”
Samuel Corner, 23, was sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison. Charlotte Head and Leona Kamio, both 30, were sentenced to five years in prison and Fatema Rajwani, 21, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.
The assault on the Bristol factory in 2024 was one of the events that led the government last year to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, which led to the arrests of more than 1,600 people protesting in support of the group between July and September last year, according to the latest figures from the Home Office.
London’s High Court ruled that the decision to proscribe the group was unlawful, but has kept the ban in place pending an appeals court ruling due Monday.
As the sentencing was underway in Woolwich Crown Court, more than 100 Palestine Action protesters were arrested outside the courthouse in southeast London.
The four defendants were convicted of criminal damage in May.
Head crashed a van through the gates of the Elbit Systems factory on Aug. 6, 2024 and the four activists, dressed in red jumpsuits, used sledgehammers and crowbars to destroy equipment with the aim of dismantling production of drones they believed would be used to kill people in the Middle East.
In the confrontation with security and law enforcement, Corner struck police Sgt. Kate Evans twice in the back with a 7-pound (3.2 kilogram) sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. He was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Evans told the court she is still recovering from her injuries and was targeted with nasty emails suggesting she worked for “the Zionist occupation of Britain.”
“The emotional impact of this incident has been profound and ongoing,” she said. “I experience disturbed sleep, often waking in a panicked state or after distressing dreams.”
Johnson's ruling that the crime was terror-related means each convict must serve at least two thirds of their sentences and will need Parole Board approval to be released.
Amnesty International said that treating criminal damage as terrorism set a dangerous precedent.
“Today’s sentencing hearing risks marking a new low in the ongoing crackdown against protest across the U.K.,” Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty’s U.K. chief executive said in a statement. “It is completely disproportionate to do so because the offense occurred at a protest.”
The convictions followed a previous trial in which jurors acquitted six defendants of aggravated burglary and violent disorder but could not reach verdicts on criminal damage charges. The two other defendants were acquitted at the retrial.
Protesters are detained by police outside Woolwich Crown Court, London, during a hearing where Palestine Action activists are due to be sentenced over a break-in at the UK base of an Israel-based defence firm, Elbit Systems site, in London, Friday June 12, 2026. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
Protesters are detained by police outside Woolwich Crown Court, London, during a hearing where Palestine Action activists are due to be sentenced over a break-in at the UK base of an Israel-based defence firm, Elbit Systems site, in London, Friday June 12, 2026. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
Protesters are detained by police outside Woolwich Crown Court, London, during a hearing where Palestine Action activists are due to be sentenced over a break-in at the UK base of an Israel-based defence firm, Elbit Systems site, in London, Friday June 12, 2026. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — The Treasury Department moved Friday to enlist the nation’s banks more deeply in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, including issuing fresh guidance that lets banks rapidly share information about suspected customers and an advisory steering them to flag signs that one of their customers may lack legal immigration status.
These changes are part of the administration’s push to remove undocumented workers from the nation’s banking system without explicitly mandating that banks do so. In order to get banks to participate, the administration has framed these actions as a crackdown on fraud and crime, not explicitly about immigration.
“The information in your purview can help stop a cartel financier, disrupt a money laundering network, uncover labor exploitation, or protect taxpayers from fraud,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in prepared remarks at a banking conference in Houston.
Bessent's remarks and the Treasury Department's new guidelines come from an executive order signed in May by Trump that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers as well as directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards. But that executive order did not include an explicit mandate that banks collect citizenship information, which the industry for months lobbied against.
Banks have long been able to share information about their customers with other banks under the Patriot Act program when they suspect money laundering or fraud, part of the post-9/11 effort to combat terrorism and other crimes.
Friday’s actions widened that system on two fronts. Banks can now share such information with one another in real time and more freely, the Treasury Department said.
Secondly, the Trump Administration is giving banks a wider variety of reasons to share information, which now include flags historically tied to immigration status. One example is a customer having an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN), which are disproportionally used by undocumented immigrants when applying for work.
Bessent told bankers that the new guidance is simply part of what the banking system needs to do as part of their routine operations.
“The advisory does not ask banks to become immigration officers,” Bessent said. “It asks banks to do what they do best: know their customers, identify risk, recognize suspicious patterns, and report illicit activity when they see it.”
Bankers have been wary about sharing customer information with the federal government as part of immigration enforcement. Bankers never collected citizenship information on their customers, so any effort to do so would require a massive effort by banks and significant amounts of paperwork. There's also the fact that banks send millions of what are known as Suspicious Activity Reports to the federal bank regulators under the Bank Secrecy Act. Last week, the Treasury Department expanded the reasons why a bank might file a SAR to include potential undocumented workers.
“The administration is saying they don't want banks to be immigration officials, but they are trying to get as close to the line as possible,” said Nicholas Anthony, who focuses on bank regulation issues at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
At the time Trump signed the order, the White House framed the effort on the premise of combating fraud, but also it said undocumented workers introduce risk to the overall financial system by taking out loans that could potentially never be repaid because the borrowers could be deported. Since banks haven't historically collected citizenship data on their customers, it's hard to quantify how much of a risk undocumented workers are to banks. One study by the left-leaning Urban Institute estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 mortgages were issued to customers with ITINs, which would be a tiny fraction of the millions of mortgages written each year.
Immigration advocates have previously said any order that would order banks to collect citizenship information would likely result in undocumented immigrants moving out of the financial system, increasing the number of “unbanked” individuals.
The White House has taken other measures to discourage undocumented workers from using the financial system. The Treasury last November announced that it would reclassify certain refundable tax credits as “federal public benefits,” which bars some immigrant taxpayers from receiving them, even if they file and pay taxes and would otherwise qualify.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent applauds during an event about Trump Accounts for children in foster care at the Department of Treasury, Thursday, June 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
