On 1 July 2026 the eight-day trial of our comrade Sarah Cotte came to an end with the jury failing to convict her on terrorism charges. A week later the court announced that – on the insistence of the Crown Prosecution Service – there will be a retrial starting on 14 September.
From the moment she was arrested, the Revolutionary Communist Group organised in solidarity with Sarah. Drawing on decades of experience of fighting against state repression, stretching back to the Irish and anti-apartheid struggles, we held public rallies and protested at every court appearance from the first plea hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 24 March 2025 to the latest sitting at the Old Bailey on 8 July 2026, where the retrial was ordered. We will be back in force on 14 September.
Our comrade was charged under section 12 of the Terrorism Act (TA) 2000 following a speech she gave outside the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 9 October 2023, two days after Operation Al Aqsa Flood and as the Zionist state commenced its genocidal retribution against the people of Gaza for daring to fight back against 75 years of Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing.
Sarah was arrested during a dawn raid on her home in January 2024, nearly four months after the speech, following a sustained campaign by on-line Zionists and the vicious UK Lawyers for Israel to bring her alleged crimes to the attention of the Metropolitan Police. For a further 13 months she was on bail, while the police held her passport and devices. Eventually, on 4 March 2025 she was charged with two counts of ‘deliberately or recklessly’ encouraging support for a proscribed organisation, namely Hamas, despite her not mentioning by name this or any other group. Instead, she spoke in clear terms of the vital principle enshrined in international law that an oppressed people has the right to use armed struggle as a means of self-defence.
On the day that Sarah was charged, another comrade who had been part of the SOAS FRFI society in 2023 was also arrested on a similar pretext and bailed pending a charging decision. The RCG mobilised quickly to support our young comrades and launched the Defend SOAS 2 campaign, setting up a campaign website, social media, an on-line petition and an open letter on which we collected the signatures of 75 supportive organisations and over 60 public figures and prominent individuals. In March 2026 we hosted an international webinar on fighting back against state repression, featuring barrister Franck Magennis and Charlotte Kates from Samidoun, alongside speakers from France, Germany and the US. Sarah and other campaign members spoke tirelessly at events around the country, highlighting the SOAS 2 case, while standing in solidarity with everyone criminalised for their support for the Palestinian struggle, including the Filton 25, Brize Norton 6, SOAS Liberated Zone, Majid Freeman and others.
The campaign received support from a wide range of individuals, groups and organisations, who attended protests and helped to spread the news of Sarah’s trial and the attack on solidarity with the Palestinian resistance that it represented. However, we struggled to get wider coverage or backing from more ‘respectable’ sections of the pro-Palestine movement. Despite extended email correspondence and face-to-face discussion with the leadership of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Stop the War, Sarah was never able to speak on the platform at national PSC demonstrations and neither organisation signed the SOAS 2 open letter. The widespread interest in the Defend our Juries campaign against the use of the TA 2000 to criminalise Palestine Action did not extend to those accused under the same act of encouraging support for the organisations of the Palestinian Resistance.
Likewise, although we sent our press statements to the entire mainstream media, the trial was only reported on in depth by the World Socialist Website, with reporter Paul Mitchell attending court every day. His report, which we have reposted on our website, meticulously details how the CPS tried to frame Sarah as a liar and how the judge summed up the case framing it within atrocity propaganda, but how our comrade responded consistently and resolutely to the cross-examination and all attempts to derail her from holding to a principled position.
Just days before Sarah’s trial commenced in the Old Bailey, the other SOAS 2 comrade was told that he would not face any charges. This was a massive victory for the campaign and shows the weakness of the state’s attempts to criminalise our comrades.
We organised daily protests throughout the trial. Nobody attending the Old Bailey could be in any doubt that a case of political significance was underway and the defendant well supported. We will do so again in September for the retrial. In her evidence to the court, Sarah made no concessions and we make none on the streets. Throughout the SOAS 2 campaign we have emphasised both the right of oppressed people in Palestine to resist and our right to support that resistance. We have vocally put across on our protests and in our literature that we do not just think that this is an isolated ‘overreach’ by the state, but that we oppose all British anti-Terrorism legislation, from the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974, which was used to criminalise the Irish community, to the Terrorism Act 2000 and all subsequent punitive laws. We have fought Sarah’s case politically and always will do in every instance where our comrades come under state attack. We will never give up supporting the risen people of Palestine or opposing the British state’s attempt to criminalise our solidarity.
An injury to one is an injury to all! Defend the right to defend Palestine!
Be at the Old Bailey, Central London Criminal Court every day of the week commencing Monday 14 September 2026. Follow @defendsoas2 for updates.
