“Anti-terror” arrests in UK over support for Palestinian resistance

Activists Mick Napier and Tony Greenstein grabbed by police.

Originally published by The Electronic Intifada, 22 December.

Mick Napier and Tony Greenstein are being persecuted by British police. (PRC/LAW)

Two of Britain’s most prominent solidarity activists were arrested this week for saying they support the Palestinian right to resist Israel.

Mick Napier, a founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was snatched by police at a protest in Glasgow on Saturday.

He had given a speech saying, “I agree with the Palestinian right to resist by means that they choose.”

Anti-Zionist author Tony Greenstein was arrested from his home early Wednesday morning by “anti-terror” police.

Greenstein told The Electronic Intifada police questioned him about a post he wrote last month on X (formerly known as Twitter) saying that he supports Palestinian resistance group “Hamas against the Israeli army.”

Napier was charged with “support for a proscribed organization” under the Terrorism Act.

In the speech he had also thanked Hamas “for breaking out of the Gaza concentration camp on October 7th.”

You can watch the full speech in the video below.

Greenstein has yet to be charged and was released on bail the same afternoon. But both his laptop and phone were seized and not returned. Napier’s phone was also confiscated.

The police imposed draconian bail conditions on both men.

Napier told The Electronic Intifada that the police who bundled him into a caged van at the protest on Saturday said that he was being arrested on “religiously aggravated” charges.

His bail conditions include a complete ban on attending any protest in Scotland at all, as well as a ban from entering the center of Glasgow, the city where he grew up and spends much of his time.

He pleaded not guilty to all five charges at a hearing on Tuesday and is next set to appear in court on 9 January.

https://twitter.com/hassan_ghani/status/1737140810909429856

https://twitter.com/hassan_ghani/status/1737140959618506931

Greenstein was bailed on condition that he is “not to post on X (formerly Twitter) in regards to the ongoing conflict in Gaza or the proscribed organization Hamas.”

He told The Electronic Intifada that “it’s very clearly an attack on freedom of speech.”

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign said in a statement on Wednesday that it would “vigorously defend Mick Napier and the words that he spoke in relation to the Palestinian right to resist Israel’s genocidal violence.”

Asked about both Napier and Greenstein, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign headquartered in London – a separate organization from the Scottish PSC – declined to comment.

“No one is available to comment,” a spokesperson said on Friday.

Greenstein quit his national PSC membership last year, but he is still a member of his local Brighton branch of the PSC.

In October, PSC’s leaders suspended the officers of Manchester PSC, one of its biggest branches, over the latter’s declaration of support for Palestinian resistance.