Starmer and Trump discussed Palestine Action twice on calls before group’s terror ban, court hears
The Supreme Court heard Sir Keir Starmer and President Donald Trump spoke to Palestine Action twice by phone before the protest group was banned under terrorism laws.
Activists from the group painted and engraved the greens of Mr. Trump’s golf course in Scotland in March 2025, reading “Gaza is not for sale”; The president wrote on social media that the prime minister assured him that they had “captured the terrorists” involved.
The group was banned as a terrorist organization four months later, in an unusual move, after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and sprayed two military aircraft with red paint.
The ban has since led to the arrest of thousands of people for holding banners expressing support for the terrorism law.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori challenged the ban in the Supreme Court, while her lawyer told the judges the impact of the ban was “dramatic, severe, widespread and potentially lifelong”.
It was previously reported that Sir Keir had asked Police Scotland for an update on protesters arrested for the attack on Mr Trump’s golf course and had briefed Mr Trump on developments. Documents now filed with the court reveal that the pair met with the protest group twice, during meetings on March 10 and 30, 2025.
Mr Husain KC, for the claimant, said then home secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to ban the organization in June 2025 was “new and unprecedented”. “This is the first direct action civil disobedience organization that does not advocate violence and has never been banned as terrorism,” he told the court.
He added that the decision Ms Cooper was hesitating on was “so extreme that it would make the UK an international outlier”.
“Palestine Action is active in other countries, but its activities are largely viewed by international partners as activism, not extremism or terrorism,” Mr. Husain said in the State Department’s March advice.
“As the FCDO has stated, acting in this way [proscribing the group] “It could be interpreted as an overreaction by the UK,” he added.
According to documents filed with the court, on March 7, 2025, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center determined that Palestine Action was related to terrorism, and the Interdiction Review Group reached the same conclusion on March 13.
Mr Husain told the Supreme Court: “Serious damage to property is not violence, there are accidental acts of violence, but it is not a group advocating violence. These acts are not the norm, they are rare.”
Ms Cooper, who banned the group following the RAF Brize Norton incident, cited as examples the group’s protest at a weapons equipment factory in Glasgow in 2022 and its targeting of Israeli defense technology company Elbit Systems UK in Bristol, where an activist allegedly hit a police sergeant with a sledgehammer in court this week.
Woolwich Crown Court heard on Monday that a police officer thought his spine had been “shattered” when he was hit in the lower back while on his knees while arresting a female activist.
Owen Greenhall, representing the claimant, told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that Palestine Action’s terrorism ban had a “very significant deterrent” effect. He showed a photo of someone holding a banner saying ‘I am against genocide’. “I support Palestine Action,” he said, telling the judges that the arrest of people carrying this banner “goes too far and in this case exemplifies the problem of prohibition.”
“To say that the Palestine Movement is not terrorist… is to exercise one’s freedom of expression by criticizing the ban,” Mr Greenhall said.
Action group Defend Our Juries said more than 2,350 people had been arrested since Palestine Action was banned.
The full hearing of the legal challenge before Dame Victoria Sharp, Mr Justice Swift and Mrs Justice Steyn will take place over two days at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
