‘Stansted Fifteen’ charges quashed
‘There’s been a trend of using this type of legislation across Europe so to have it thrown out is really good.'
The ‘Stansted Fifteen’ protestors have won their appeal against terrorism-related convictions for stopping a deportation flight from taking off in March 2017. The verdict came on 29 January when the Court of Appeal said: ‘The appellants should not have been prosecuted [under this act]… There was, in truth, no case to answer.’
The group were prosecuted in 2018 for endangering the safety of an aerodrome after blocking the departure of an immigration removal flight carrying fifty-seven people to Nigeria and Ghana. None of the group served prison sentences but undertook between 150 to 200 hours of community orders.
Brighton Quaker Lyndsay Burtonshaw, one of the group, told the Friend she was relieved, not least because of the effect the charges would have on other acts of witness. ‘There’s been a trend of using this type of legislation across Europe so to have it thrown out is really good. We’ve all been through it, but it’s nothing to what people who face deportation and detention go through.’
Of the people on board the flight, Lyndsay Burtonshaw said up to four people are victims of trafficking, while eleven are still in the country. ‘We still don’t know what happened to a lesbian Nigerian woman whose ex-husband in Nigeria had threatened to kill her,’ she said. ‘I think about her a lot.’
The Brighton Friend, who became a Quaker during this process, thanked Quakers for their help. ‘To have been upheld and looked after in this way has been incredible.’
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