Activists who attacked bank spared jail

Four people from the Palestine Action group who attacked a bank in August 2024 have been spared immediate jail sentences.

The activists were convicted of criminal damage after covering a Barclays bank in Burnley, Lancashire, with red paint and breaking its windows, causing about £200,000 worth of damage.

The group said it had targeted Barclays over the bank's links to defence company Elbit Systems, which it claimed had supplied military components used by Israel in the conflict in Gaza.

Hmeera Atiqnisar was given a two-year prison sentence, suspended for 20 months. Mohammed Malik, Brendon O'Hagan and Amanda Kelly were each given 20-month suspended prison sentences. A fifth defendant, Alma Yaniv, will be sentenced in December.

The group wore masks when they smashed windows and hurled red paint at the bank's Burnley branch in a 02:00 BST operation, while a security guard was "distressed" inside the building.

The damage cost £212,805 and the group filmed the attack and shared the footage online.

Judge Robert Altham, sitting at Preston Crown Court, said Atiqnisar, 31, was the principal organiser.

He jailed her for two years but suspended the sentence for 20 months and told her she must carry out 250 hours of unpaid work.

Brendon O'Hagon, 28, who filmed the late-night attack; Amanda Kelly, 32, who sprayed paint; and Mohammed Malik, 28, who smashed windows; were all handed 20-month jail terms, also suspended for 20 months, and ordered to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work.

A fifth member of the group, 70-year-old getaway driver Alma Yaniv, who failed to stop for police and went through two red lights in a Toyota Yaris, will be sentenced in December.

They were all convicted of criminal damage following a trial in June.

The judge previously ruled any terrorism element to their offending did not apply, meaning they would face lesser sentences.

The court heard the defendants, apart from Yaniv, were trained by Palestine Action, but this was before the Home Secretary proscribed the organisation.

Ahead of sentencing, the judge read references for the defendants, who were all of good character.

This included hearing how Atiqnisar had taught girls at a mosque and was the registered carer for her brother, Yaniv was a foster carer and volunteer with the Samaritans and Malik was a "compassionate" and caring member of his community.

Judge Altham said of the defendants: "They are otherwise perfectly law-abiding people."

But he took account of the planning the late-night attack took, the cost of the damage, and the distress caused to a security guard who was trapped inside the branch as multiple windows were smashed.

He said: "Whilst this was non-violent protest, it still involved the potentially shocking sight of masked people running through the streets of Burnley late at night armed with hammers and, without any regard at all for the security staff inside, taking those hammers to the windows of a building and causing significant damage."

The judge accepted the defendants were motivated by their "sincerely held beliefs" and they have now accepted that protests should remain within the law.

He said: "Nothing I say is intended to question the sincerity of those beliefs, still less to require any of you to abandon them.

"But in a democratic society there is a fundamental distinction between holding and expressing even the strongest political beliefs and deciding that the strength or morality of those beliefs entitles a person to break the criminal law in pursuit of them.

"The decisive factor which permits me to suspend these sentences is my conclusion that you four have now understood this distinction, that however sincerely a cause is held, that sincerity does not provide a licence to pursue it by unlawful means."

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