Four activists convicted over £1 million Elbit factory raid near Bristol
Four activists were convicted over a prison-van raid on Elbit’s Filton factory, where prosecutors said about £1 million in damage was caused.
A prison van rammed through the perimeter fencing at Elbit Systems UK’s Filton site near Bristol, and the case ended with four activists convicted of criminal damage over destruction prosecutors valued at about £1 million.
At Woolwich Crown Court on 5 May 2026, Charlotte Head, 30, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, and Fatema Zainab Rajwani, 21, were found guilty after a retrial. Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31, were acquitted. Corner was also convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm after prosecutors said he struck a police officer with a sledgehammer.
The prosecution said the raid took place in the early hours of 6 August 2024 at the South Gloucestershire factory operated by the Israeli defence company Elbit Systems UK. According to prosecutors, the group entered the site wearing red boiler suits and armed with sledgehammers and crowbars after using a former prison van as a battering ram. Inside the factory, they were accused of smashing computers, drones and other equipment while spraying red paint across the premises.
The verdicts followed an earlier trial that ended with all six defendants being acquitted of aggravated burglary, while jurors could not reach verdicts on the criminal damage charges. Violent disorder charges against all six were later dropped. The shifting outcomes underline the legal uncertainty around how far direct action can go before courts treat it not as protest but as serious property crime and violence.
The case has become part of a wider argument over Gaza-era activism and the policing of protest in Britain. The raid was tied to Palestine Action, the pro-Palestinian group that was later proscribed under UK terrorism law in 2025. That ban, announced by the UK Home Office on 1 July 2025, was later ruled unlawful by the High Court and is now subject to a government appeal.
That legal fight has intensified scrutiny of how ministers and courts are drawing the boundary between disruptive protest and criminal liability. Supporters of tougher action say attacks on defence-linked sites threaten public order and endanger workers and police. Critics argue the state is using extraordinary powers to suppress protest movements around the war in Gaza, with the risk that harsher penalties could push activists toward different tactics or deeper secrecy rather than ending the campaign altogether.
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