https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-action-defendants-targeted-elbits-use-deadly-ai-court-hears" rel="bookmark">
Palestine Action defendants targeted Elbit's use of ‘deadly AI’, court hears
Palestine Action defendants charged in connection with a break-in at an Elbit Systems factory targeted the Israeli arms company’s use of artificial intelligence, an English court heard on Friday.
Leona Kamio, 30, Charlotte Head, 29, Jordan Devlin, 31, Fatema Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Samuel Corner, 23, face charges of criminal damage in connection with the break-in at the factory at Filton, near Bristol, in August 2024.
Testifying at London’s Woolwich Crown Court on Friday, Rogers said she and fellow defendant Kamio had sought to destroy computers in the Elbit factory because the company “uses AI to target its victims”.
She said the factory, in the west of England, was “an R&D [research and development] factory” whose advanced weapons technology included AI-driven support systems used by Israel.
Elbit’s https://www.elbitsystems.com/ai-driven-decision-support-systems ">own website describes the Israeli state-owned company’s “vast and unparalleled experience developing world-leading ground and in-flight simulators… [providing] the technological basis for the company’s AI-driven Decision Support Systems”.
Devlin, from Ballymena in Northern Ireland, told the court on Friday afternoon that “the AI system is the most deadly”.
The factory “is really an R&D site”, he said.
As a product designer, he understood that if AI systems could be damaged early on in their development then “you really are saving lives”.
Rogers, from north London, told the court that when the activists entered the factory, they wanted “to destroy Elbit’s killer drones and save as many lives as possible”.
'I remember destroying weapons used to kill children'
- Zoe Rogers, defendant
“I remember destroying weapons used to kill children,” she said of the break-in.
Rogers said she had seen footage of Elbit’s https://www.elbitsystems.com/networked-warfare/robotic-and-autonomous-solutions/tactical-unmanned-aerial-systems/thor">Thor BTOL quadcopter, which has been deployed in Gaza.
Rogers told the court it was “used to drop grenades on people”.
Earlier in the day, Rajwani, Rogers’ fellow defendant, also referred to looking for “quadcopter drones” manufactured by Elbit.
She described them as “a kind of drone that Elbit is known for producing, it is a weapon that I believe would kill or injure children”.
“My specific intention was to dismantle drones and weaponry,” Rajwani said, adding that she had damaged computers as well as drones.
Devlin described what he understood to be Palestine Action’s aim: “To shut Elbit down.
It’s an absolutely horrific company and I don’t understand why it’s still allowed.”
'I still have nightmares about the shouting'
This week, Woolwich Crown Court has heard testimony from the defendants and seen footage of the August 2024 raid on factory, including confrontations between activists and security guards and then police officers.
The defendants entered the factory in the early hours of 6 August.
During the confrontations, defendants suffered injuries from a sledgehammer and tasers, and were sprayed with Pava, a synthetic pepper spray.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-action-defendant-wounded-taser-and-sledgehammer-after-raid-court-hears">
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-action-defendant-wounded-taser-and-sledgehammer-after-raid-court-hears">Read More »
Sergeant Kate Evans, a police officer, was struck twice by Corner, who told the jury on Thursday that having been incapacitated by the Pava spray, he believed Evans was a “burly security guard” who was attacking his friend.
On Friday, the court heard about footage showing Angelo Volante, a security guard, shouting at Rajwani and Head to “get on the floor”.
“Volante is one of the scariest people I have come across in my entire life, I still have nightmares about the shouting,” Rajwani, who was born in Tanzania but moved to England as a child, told the court.
After her encounter with Volante, Rajwani, a student who worked four part-time jobs, was arrested and then, the court heard, “subsequently re-arrested for terrorism offences”.
“Being Muslim and also visibly brown, I grew up hearing stories about terrorism and what that means for people like me,” she told the court.
“It’s also something I associate with torture and unfair trials.
I was terrified I would never leave custody.”
Rajwani said that, at the factory, she had used a GoPro camera to gather evidence of what Elbit was doing, as well as to broadcast the action to the world.
'I grew up around violence'
Rogers, who like Corner is autistic and who, like Devlin and Corner, has an ADHD diagnosis, said she had heard about Palestine Action after learning about direct action, which she described as “making change yourself”, rather than “asking for it from the government”.
Her defence lawyer, Audrey Cherryl Mogan, read from a Palestine Action document from July 2023, which was produced to prepare activists for the possibility of time in prison.
“Becoming a prisoner for taking action against Israel’s arms trade is proof of causing significant costs to the arms industry and its protector - the imperial British state,” the document reads.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-action-defendants-wanted-destroy-many-weapons-possible-court-told">
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-action-defendants-wanted-destroy-many-weapons-possible-court-told">Read More »
“In a neutralised and pacified society that confirms a business model based on the genocide of Palestinian people, taking action is not only crucial but a rare act of solidarity.”
Rogers told the court that she didn’t want to go to prison, that she had not been able to renew her studies because she had been in prison, and that “the whole prison system in this country is engineered to make money”.
At the end of the day in court, Devlin took the stand and described his childhood as a Catholic in the largely Protestant town of Ballymena.
He said a British soldier had saved his grandfather’s life after his grandfather was almost beaten to death by loyalists.
The court was shown Sam Fender, the singer and songwriter from North Shields, holding a statue made by Devlin for the Mercury Prize, which Fender won last year.
“I grew up around violence and it seems completely senseless to me that humans do this to each other,” Devlin told the court. “There is a way to achieve what we want in this life without going to these extreme measures.”
The case continues.