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The fate of hundreds of people arrested for allegedly supporting Palestine Action will remain in limbo if a legal challenge to the group’s proscription is blocked, the court of appeal has heard.
The Home Office asked the court on Thursday to overturn a judge’s decision to grant the Palestine Action co-founder, Huda Ammori, a judicial review of the ban, which placed it alongside the likes of Islamic State and the neo-Nazi group National Action.
Sir James Eadie KC, representing the Home Office, said the high court’s decision was wrong because there was already a mechanism to challenge proscription by appealing to the home secretary and then the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (Poac).
He said in written submissions that there was “nothing exceptional about the respondent’s [Ammori’s] case that justifies allowing her to avoid the statutory scheme”.
But Raza Husain KC, representing Ammori, argued that the case was “unique”.
The home secretary has 90 days to respond to a challenge to proscription under the Terrorism Act before the Poac process can begin. Husain said that Mr Justice Chamberlain, sitting at the high court, was right to raise concerns that Poac would not hear the case until the middle of next year, whereas a judicial review could take place in the autumn. It has been scheduled for 25 to 27 November.
In seeking a judicial review, Husain said his client relied on “the unique nature of the case: the proscription of a protest group with widespread popular support; and the severe detriments that would flow from the Poac route on these facts, including: the ongoing and irremediable chilling of speech and assembly in the interim; the delayed determination of a matter relevant to ongoing criminal cases; and the fact that the Poac route offers no remedy to the hundreds of people already arrested for offences related to support for PA [Palestine Action.”
More than 1,600 people have been arrested for allegedly expressing support for Palestine Action since the ban came into force on 5 July, of whom 138 have been charged.
Husain said Ammori would be asking the high court for an order – which Poac could not make – quashing the ban, “with the result that any police enforcement in respect of offences under TA [Terrorism Act] 2000 in respect of PA (including arrests, charges and convictions) would be nullities”.
Asked by the judges what he thought would happen to people arrested for supporting Palestine Action if Poac de-proscribed the group, Eadie said that there was “not a clear and obvious answer”. He suggested that offences for supporting Palestine Action prior to any overturning of the ban could still stand.
“Parliament has designed the scheme so that the jurisdiction of Poac is no different to that of the high court so that there can be no suggestion of there being any advantage in proceeding with judicial review proceedings rather than a statutory appeal,” Eadie said.
Speaking before the hearing, Ammori called it an “alarming attempt to prevent judicial scrutiny” of the “extreme and unprecedented decision” to proscribe the group.
The panel of three judges, led by the lady chief justice, Sue Carr, said they hope to give a judgment next month.
