The Stansted 15
Sue Clayton, 2017 (20 mins)
In March 2017, 15 peaceful protesters put up a banner airport-side at Stansted airport to contest a deportation flight on which they knew were people whose cases had not been resolved, who faced grave danger on return to their home countries. What happened next is truly shocking, and should concern us all.
Update, 29th of January from the BBC “Protesters who broke into Stansted Airport to stop a plane deporting people to Africa have won an appeal against their convictions. The group, known as the Stansted 15, cut through the perimeter fence and locked themselves together around a Boeing 767 jet in 2017. They were convicted of the intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome.
The Lord Chief Justice said they “should not have been prosecuted for the extremely serious offence”.
A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said: “We will consider the judgment carefully in the next 28 days.”The jet they surrounded in March 2017 had been chartered by the Home Office to transport people from UK detention centres for repatriation to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
And from the Guardian newspaper…
