8 anti-arms fair activists acquitted

Eight activists have been acquitted of all charges after protesting outside the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London in September 2015.

All the defendants denied willful obstruction of the highway in their protest.

Turkey’s Exporters’ Association was the International Partner of DSEI 2015 with a government and military delegation present. The court was presented with evidence of Turkey’s aggression against its Kurdish population where it has declared 63 open-ended, round-the-clock curfews on many Kurdish cities since August 2015, using snipers, tanks and rockets to repress civilians.

Bahrain had also been invited by the UK Government to previous DSEI exhibitions in 2009, 2013 and 2015 despite the regime’s use of weapons against pro-democracy protests. According to Kat Hobbs, outreach co-ordinator at Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), the UK’s arms contracts to Bahrain has been used to suppress civilian protesters demanding greater democracy.

The court also heard evidence of UK manufactured arms worth £2.8 billion sold to Saudi which have been used in attacks on Yemen.

Hobbs called for an end to UK arms trade and events such as DSEI which are complicit in causing and profiting from the refugee crisis. Instead of building fences they are “detaining people and denying them their human rights at the borders and causing deaths with UK policies and actions.”

In a joint statement, the defendants said they felt “compelled to try to prevent war, repression, torture and genocide and we stand by our actions. Over the week, we have put DSEI and the arms trade on trial and we have proven them to be illegitimate. Our only regret is that we didn’t succeed in shutting down DSEI.”