British counterterrorism police charged seven people with violent disorder on Tuesday, after a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators forced their way into a building owned by an Israeli defense firm in southwest England.
Seven people ages 20 to 51 were charged with criminal damage and violent disorder, the police said in a statement. One man, age 22, was also charged with assault.
The Crown Prosecution Service, the public prosecutor for England and Wales, said it would argue in a court hearing on Tuesday “that these offenses have a terrorist connection.”
The seven individuals are accused of taking part in a raid in the early hours of Aug. 6 that targeted Elbit, an Israeli defense firm whose British subsidiaries employ around 700 people across 16 sites.
Activists from Palestine Action, a protest movement that aims to disrupt Israeli arms manufacturing in Britain, broke into Elbit Systems U.K.’s research and development site, known as Horizon, last week.
The group used a van to drive through a fence, police said in a statement. Once inside the building in Filton, near Bristol, the group smashed equipment and damaged property. The police said they found axes, sledgehammers and homemade weapons on the scene. Two police officers were assaulted with a sledgehammer, the statement said, and one of them was taken to a hospital for treatment.
More than a dozen people were in the vehicle, but most fled the scene, the police said. Those who were arrested were held under Britain’s counterterrorism laws, which allow police to detain suspects for up to 14 days without charge.
Two other people remain in custody while detectives continue to question them. The investigation, which is still ongoing, is being handled by Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing unit.
In a statement, Amnesty International, the human rights group, questioned the use of terrorist legislation in the case, and said it had longstanding concerns about such laws being used to “circumvent normal legal protections and to pursue charges that are not commensurate with the facts of a case.”
“The Crown Prosecution Service’s reference to these alleged offenses having a ‘terrorist connection’ is troubling,” said Tom Southerden, Amnesty’s U.K. law and human rights director. He added, “Ordinary criminal offenses can be investigated and prosecuted using ordinary criminal procedures, a process that helps ensure that the rights of those accused are properly protected.”
Before the charges were announced, Palestine Action said in a statement that the attack on Elbit’s site was “to prevent its manufacture of weapons for genocide” and that it wanted to undermine the company’s “profiteering from Israel’s daily massacres.”
The activist group accused the police of launching a “smear campaign” against the seven detained people in claiming they had used violence against police officers and security guards. “The activists are unable to respond to these claims, and unable to describe for public record the force used against them by police and private security,” the statement said.
Palestine Action, which was founded in 2020, has repeatedly targeted Elbit’s drone and surveillance manufacturing sites by vandalizing property, spray-painting slogans and occupying a rooftop.
Elbit said that the Horizon facility did not supply any weapons or technology to the Israeli military or its ministry of defense.
“We provide critical support and advanced technology to the British Armed Forces from our Horizon site,” the group said in a statement.
The weapons manufacturer opened the site in July last year, producing technology for the British Armed Forces and other NATO countries, it said in a statement at the time.
Rawan Yaghi contributed reporting.
Read More: Seven People Charged Over Break-In at Israeli Arms Company’s U.K. Site
