One of the most respected human rights lawyers in the world, Geoffrey Robertson KC AO, the Founding Head of Doughty Street (the chambers where Keir Starmer first built his career) has written a blistering critique – not only of the ruling, but the entire court proceedings, in an essay that takes us back to 1670 and the very establishment of a jury’s right to acquit.
“The principle of the Elbit Four case is larger than they are,” he writes. “The British state has redefined civil disobedience as terrorism – lengthening sentences, stripping prison privileges, and marking dissenters for life – as a result of a finding made in secret by a judge.”
It is an essential analysis of a trial that could undermine basic rights and freedoms of people in the UK for generations to come, but one that is sorely missing from the media.
Read it in the Guardian: “You may not sympathise with the Elbit four’s methods. But you should be outraged by their treatment under the law“.