February 13, 2024
Three pro-Palestine protesters were today found guilty of celebrating the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians by displaying images of a paraglider on a London march a week after terrorists murdered 1,200 people.
Heba Alhayek, 29 and Pauline Ankunda, 26, had the small images taped to their backs, while Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo, 27, carried one attached to the handle of a placard.
They carried the images just seven days after Hamas militants used paragliders to enter Israel and slaughter families on October 7. Footage showed terrorists gunning down civilians at point blank range, including 364 revellers at a music festival.
‘The displaying of these images could be viewed as celebrating the use of the paragliders’ tactic,’ prosecutor Brett Weaver told Westminster magistrates.
Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo, 27, arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court today for a trial where she will be accused of indicating support for banned organisation Hamas
Pauline Ankunda, 26, outside Westminster Magistrates Court. Like her co-defendants she denies the charges against her
Police gave the operation to find the women the unofficial moniker ‘paraglider girls’. The court heard that the pro-Hamas interpretation was so ‘obvious’ it did not require further work.
But, giving evidence in defence of the trio, veteran Guardian journalist and human rights campaigner Victoria Brittain claimed images of balloons, birds, kites and parachutes were popular in the context of a Palestinian desire to ‘fly away’ from perceived entrapment in Gaza.
Asked by Mark Summers KC, for Alhayek and Ankunda, about what ‘an informed, politically aware observer’ would have made of the image, she said: ‘It would have been [interpreted as] another typical Palestinian symbol of flight and escaping prison.’
Hamas is banned as a terror organisation in the UK and the trio’s actions were widely condemned online. After the Met launched a social media appeal to find them, Alhayek and Ankunda handed themselves in.
Ankunda and Alhayek had the images sellotaped to their backs
The offence the women are accused of is contrary to section 13(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000
They initially claimed someone at the protest ‘not known to them’ had stuck the images to their backs, before admitting they had attached them. When arrested, Taiwo claimed to have been handed the placard and not paid full attention to the ‘blurry image’.
Deputy Senior District Judge Tan Ikram found the trio guilty today.
