Popular Greta Thunberg and four others charged with public order offences over a protest in London have been cleared after a judge ruled that they had no case to answer.
Recall that Thunberg was charged alongside Christofer Kebbon, Joshua James Unwin, Jeff Rice and Peter Barker with “failing to comply with a condition imposed under section 14 of the Public Order Act”. They had been taking part in a protest outside the InterContinental hotel in Mayfair, the venue for the Energy Intelligence Forum (EIF), a fossil fuel industry summit attended by corporate executives and government ministers.
According to reports, all of them were arrested after the senior officer at the scene enacted the section 14 order to impose conditions on the protest, which had blocked access to and from the hotel for guests and EIF delegates.
At the conclusion of the prosecution case on Friday, the second day of their trial at Westminster magistrates court, Judge Laws agreed that the crown had failed to present enough evidence to prove their case.
Laws said that the conditions imposed on protesters were “so unclear that it is unlawful”, which meant “anyone failing to comply were actually committing no offence”.
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Delivering the judgement, the judge said that the protest was “throughout peaceful, civilised and non-violent” and he criticised evidence provided by the prosecution about the location the demonstrators should be moved to, saying the only helpful footage he received was “made by an abseiling protester”.
He added: “It is quite striking to me that there were no witness statements taken from anyone in the hotel, approximately 1,000 people, or from anyone trying to get in. There was no evidence of any vehicles being impeded, no evidence of any interference with emergency services, or any risk to life.”
Raj Chada, who represented Thunberg, Kebbon and Unwin, had argued that his clients had not had the details of the section 14 order properly communicated to them by the arresting officers.
In each case, Chada said, “It is unclear as to what the condition was or what was communicated, and so what the defendants should know or didn’t know; and so the prosecution case fails at this stage.”
Going through the evidence of each arresting officer in turn, Chada argued that each had failed to properly communicate the details of the condition placed on the protest. In the case of Kebbon, the officer told him he was being arrested for section 14 “obstruction”; and in the cases of Unwin and Thunberg, officers gave incorrect details of the location to which the order redirected protesters.
“In relation to Miss Thunberg, [the officer] was asked [while giving evidence] specifically about what the condition was, and he said Piccadilly Place,” said Chada.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
