No Supreme Court for ‘Stansted Fifteen’
'There was, in truth, no case to answer.’
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has confirmed that it will not be taking the successful appeal won by the ‘Stansted Fifteen’ earlier this year to the Supreme Court. Quaker Lyndsay Burtonshaw, a member of the group, shared the news on social media on 25 February. ‘No more trials!’ they tweeted.
The Brighton Quaker told the Friend: ‘We were told the Crown will not ask permission for the Court of Appeal to certify a point for consideration by the Supreme Court. The Crown will not pursue the case in the Magistrates’ Court, so we are not being prosecuted further for aggravated trespass and the appeal is successful and final. We have no more info on whys and wherefores, but we suspect it’s that the CPS cannot justify such another colossal waste of public money persecuting us, especially at this time.
‘For now, all of us will be claiming back all our train tickets to Chelmsford that cost us an arm and a leg, some of us will be working with These Walls Must Fall to call out racist reporting systems and I am personally going to be doing more workshops on sustaining our resistance, mixing radicalism and anti-racism with the Work That Reconnects.’
The ‘Stansted Fifteen’ protestors won their appeal in January against terrorism-related convictions for stopping a deportation flight from taking off in 2017. The Court of Appeal said: ‘The appellants should not have been prosecuted [under this act]… There was, in truth, no case to answer.’
