A man has been arrested in Glasgow for holding a paper sign allegedly supportive of the proscribed direct action group Palestine Action, the third arrest of its kind across the city in the past week.
Police Scotland confirmed that the 64-year-old man, who had been speaking to a small group of protesters gathered at Nelson Mandela Place in the city centre on Friday afternoon, had been arrested in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act “for displaying a sign expressing support for a proscribed organisation”.
The sign read “Genocide in Palestine, time to take action” with the words Palestine and action larger than the others. Another man wearing a T-shirt with the same slogan was charged with a similar offence last weekend at the TRNSMT music festival in Glasgow Green.
As lunchtime shoppers passed by the scene of the small protest on Friday, police officers asked the man to stop displaying the sign, which he refused to do. He was then arrested and led away in handcuffs to chants of “let him go”. The incident was peaceful throughout.
The ban on Palestine Action came into force on 5 July after a high court judge refused to grant the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori an injunction suspending it while a judicial review was pending.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, announced the ban late last month, days after activists from the group broke into RAF Brize Norton and defaced two military aircraft with spray paint.
Cat Train, who attended the protest wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “mothers against genocide”, said: “I wore this T-shirt to remind police that we are witnessing genocide in Gaza, with women and children killed daily, while our freedom to draw attention to this is being massively quashed.”
Train added that, while she believed the high court judge had offered reassurances that not all direct action relating to Gaza was proscribed, “there seems to be real confusion in how to enforce this”.
This week a third man was charged with a similar offence. The 38-year -old was charged on Wednesday under the Terrorism Act for allegedly “displaying a poster expressing support for a proscribed organisation at a property in the Shawlands area of Glasgow”.
A 55-year-old man was charged last Saturday outside the TRNSMT music festival, again in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act, for allegedly “wearing a T-shirt expressing support for a proscribed organisation”.
The T-shirts were produced by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Their spokesperson, Mick Napier, who attended Friday’s protest, said: “We put this T-shirt out because we wanted to use the furore around the ban to draw attention to the genocide. The T-shirt is not about Palestine Action, it’s about genocide”.
Napier said the 55-year-old, who had been leafleting at the festival before his arrest, had an “excellent response” from festivalgoers.
“We’re getting a substantially different response from the public even than two months ago. The atrocious actions in Gaza are burning deep into the national and international psyche.”
A Police Scotland spokesperson said of Friday’s arrest: “A 64-year-old man has been arrested in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act for displaying a sign expressing support for a proscribed organisation.”
Since MPs voted in favour of proscribing Palestine Action at the start of July, the ban has been condemned by UN experts, civil liberties groups, cultural figures and hundreds of lawyers as draconian and setting a dangerous precedent by conflating protest with terrorism.
More than 70 people were arrested across the UK last weekend at demonstrations where references to Palestine Action were allegedly made.
