The Home Office has spent nearly £700,000 of taxpayer money fighting a legal challenge brought by Palestine Action.Huda Ammori, co-founder of the proscribed group, launched legal action following the Government’s decision to designate the organisation as a terror group.Since the ban came into force, thousands of people have been arrested for holding signs expressing support for Palestine Action.Figures disclosed through a Freedom of Information request, seen by The Independent, show the Home Office has incurred legal costs of £694,390.03.
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The funds were used to cover Government Legal Department costs, counsel fees and other court expenses linked to the case.Lawyers for Palestine Action argued in High Court that the decision by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was “novel and unprecedented”Defending the group, Raza Hussain KC said the group was a “direct action civil disobedience organisation that does not advocate for violence”.He added that cases of serious violence by the group were a rarity.A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, who have campaigned to lift the ban on Palestine Action, said: “None of the costs arising from this crackdown are in the public interest.”These are unnecessary and politically-driven costs that serve only to protect companies which the UN has named as profiting from genocide and the state of Israel itself.”The group was proscribed after an incident where activists broke into an RAF base in Oxfordshire and sprayed military planes with red paint.Mrs Cooper cited an incident in Bristol at Elbit Systems UK, an Israeli defence firm, as one of the reasons to proscribe Palestine Action.LATEST DEVELOPMENTSDelayed local elections could be FORCED to go ahead as Tories urged to back high-stakes motionReform drops ex-Boris Johnson ally days after enlisting him to help Nigel Farage with green policiesNigel Farage backs Jim Ratcliffe’s claims Britain is colonised by immigrants in face of backlashHowever, six activists linked to the group were cleared of aggravated burglary following a break-in trial at Woolwich Crown Court in south London last week.All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary, while the jury – after deliberating for 36 hours and 34 minutes – failed to reach verdicts on separate criminal damage charges.The legal costs pale in comparison to the wider expense of policing demonstrations in support of Palestine Action since the group was proscribed.The ban, which came into force in early July last year, made expressing support for Palestine Action a criminal offence.Government data spanning to September 2025 revealed there were 1,630 arrests linked to supporting Palestine Action.Nearly 500 were arrested at a protest in support of Palestine Action organised by Defend Our Juries in October.The fees spent on legal services by the Home Office are small compared to the cost of policing the proscribed group.Metropolitan Police told the London Assembly that it had cost around £.6million to police protests and carry out arrests associated with the proscription of Palestine Action.Yasmine Ahmed, UK director of Human Rights Watch, told The Telegraph: “The staggering costs of this court case emphasise how committed the UK government is to stifling legitimate criticism of Israel.”The use of counter-terrorism legislation to proscribe Palestine Action is a grave abuse of state power and just one of a suite of measures this government is using to curtail people’s right to protest.”
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