We republish below an interview with FRFI supporter Sarah, one of the SOAS 2, by the organisation Red Spark in Australia. The original interview can be found here.
The SOAS 2 are two comrades in Britain who have been targeted by the British state under Terrorism legislation for standing in solidarity with Palestine. At the time of their arrests the comrades were students at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and supporters of the SOAS Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! society.
In this interview, Sarah speaks to Ria Evelyn from Red Spark about the arrests of both comrades and the charges against her, as well as the history of terrorism legislation in Britain being used to repress political protesting, the context today of an imperialist Britain in crisis lashing out, the failures of the reformist left and the importance of political defence campaigns.
Red Spark: can you talk us through what happened to you and what charges you are facing?
Sarah: I allegedly gave a speech outside of my university, SOAS, in October 2023 in which I supported the Palestinian right to resist occupation and genocide, including armed resistance as protected under international law. That speech was recorded and circulated among Zionist circles on Twitter. An account called Gnasher Jew specifically tagged the London Metropolitan police saying that I should be arrested and separately UK Lawyers for Israel also made a complaint to the Met police. The online Zionists are doing police work into people’s lives, particularly young people and people of colour, and then handing the police a prepared case so the only work the police have to do is actually arrest the person.
Three months after the alleged offence, in January 2024 there was a dawn raid on my flat. I was arrested under the Terrorism Act; the police seized my devices, including my phone and laptop which I used for my university work and anything which appeared to them as political – my keffiyeh, newspapers, pamphlets. I was brought to the police station and luckily, because of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! I was connected to a supportive solicitor who defended my rights and pushed back on the attempt to impose an effective ban on me attending protests as part of my bail conditions.
I was reinterviewed in October 2024 after the police got into the phone they had seized in my initial arrest. Eventually on 4 March 2025, over a year after my initial arrest, I was charged for two counts of section 12 (1a) of the Terrorism Act, one for the alleged speech and one for an alleged WhatsApp message on my phone. When I went to the police station, I had a comrade come to support me. While I was in the police station with my lawyer, they arrested my comrade under the same act as I was arrested under and for a similar offence and at the same time 12 police officers had gone to the comrade’s flat to raid it, seizing devices and political materials.
My comrade was released on bail and is waiting to find out whether or not they will be charged too. They have a bail date set for September 2025. My trial is expected to take place in February 2026, which will be almost two and a half years after the alleged incident took place. I was 19 when I was arrested and I’m 21 now.
The maximum penalty for a section 12 offence is 14 years in prison and that’s what I’m facing. Because I’m not a British citizen it also carries the threat of having my visa revoked or of me being deported. Even if I don’t face prison time, I would have a terrorism conviction on my record for the rest of my life and it will have implications on what jobs I can do and what countries I can go to. Monzo threatened to close down my bank account and I have had to surrender my passport. All of this is meant to intimidate people, scare them and discourage them from participating in further actions in support of the Palestinian people.
RS: Why do you think you were targeted and why do you think the British state has cracked down on solidarity with Palestine since 7 October 2023?
Sarah: The first people and groups who were targeted by the state following 7 October were people speaking about Palestinian resistance. Use of the ‘victory to the intifada’ and ‘globalise the intifada’ chants were specifically severely repressed because speaking of Palestinian resistance is a direct threat to British imperialism.
When we speak about the Palestinian people as freedom fighters actively fighting back against occupation and the state of Israel and its imperialist backers, that is a direct challenge to British imperialist interests in the Middle East. Now, support for that position is growing and the ruling class in Britain can sense a looming crisis in terms of the security of its power, so we are currently seeing a more general sweeping wave of repression. If they felt safe and there was no fear, the ruling class wouldn’t bother lifting a finger to try and silence us.
RS: One of the most recent examples of British state repression is the proscription of Palestine Action, but the British state has a long history of criminalising solidarity with Palestine.
Sarah: We totally oppose the existence of the British state’s proscription powers, which are being used exactly as they were designed to be, to criminalise sections of the population. If we look at the history of criminalising solidarity, the first terrorism legislations were meant to criminalise solidarity with the Irish liberation struggle and to repress Irish communities living in Britain. Those terrorism powers were then expanded to include Muslim communities and other immigrant communities.
Countless Palestinian, Kurdish and other resistance groups have been proscribed under the Terrorism Act of 2000 and the Powers of Proscription for the supposed crime of fighting for the liberation of their people in a way that is legitimate even under bourgeois international law. Our solidarity has to be with the Palestinian people and their struggle first and foremost, which necessarily means we oppose proscription powers and their existence in the first place.
RS: The Terror legislation is being used against political protesters by a Labour Party government, and since 2024 Britain’s political and material support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine has been provided by the Labour government. Are you surprised by Labour Party’s support for Israel’s genocide and how it has policed domestic pro-Palestinian solidarity?
Sarah: I don’t think anybody can be surprised by what Labour is doing, it’s part of their heritage. I was arrested under the Tories and then charged under Labour, but it’s not as if this is ‘Keir Starmer’s Labour Party going against what Labour stands for’. The Terrorism Act was brought in by a Labour government in 2000. The Labour Party has been there with the Zionist state every step of the way, right from its inception up until now. The supposed Labour Left has also been appallingly weak in its solidarity. It is nowhere to be seen when it comes to supporting those of us being criminalised here in Britain, let alone supporting the Palestinians right to resistance.
We have to stop looking to reformist politics and establishment politics as an answer to fundamental, core issues with the British state. There’s enthusiasm around Jeremy Corbyn’s and Zarah Sultana’s new Party and what they could possibly achieve, but I’m not excited by having new faces, or old faces, in power. Corbyn, when he was leader of the Labour Party, capitulated to Zionism over and over again at the expense of the Palestinian people and I have no faith that it would be any different now. The reality is we have to build an alternative ourselves, in the face of the Crown Prosecution services, the court system, the so-called justice system. We have to build our own organisations capable of fighting back against the bourgeois state.
RS: What inspired you to fight back against your charges and form the SOAS 2 Defence Campaign and what support have you received from where?
Sarah: We founded the SOAS 2 Defence Campaign for a number of reasons. Firstly, when you’re facing political persecution you have to defend yourself in a political way. Secondly, being arrested and being charged gives you a platform to speak out against state repression. Third, we know we can’t rely on legalistic mechanisms, so SOAS 2 is the political arm of our campaign.
We took inspiration for our approach from the Revolutionary Communist Group’s Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign in the 1980s. Mendis was a Sri Lankan national and supporter of the Tamil liberation struggle, who the British state was trying to deport to Sri Lanka while the Sri Lankan government was persecuting supporters of the Tamil resistance. The Revolutionary Communist Group organised a defence campaign to oppose his deportation and a lot of civil society actors were involved in the campaign, including the Church. Having widespread support is important, but only if it’s done on your terms and without compromising your politics.
We welcome people into the SOAS 2 campaign and if, for example, a Labour MP wanted to support us we wouldn’t oppose that. But people joining the campaign can’t take issue with us speaking about the legitimacy of the Palestinian people fighting back in every way they have available to them.
In the face of people and solidarity being criminalised, not just the SOAS 2 but for example the Filton 23, we have to be raising awareness of these cases and speaking out. This is a moment in which deep contradictions are being exposed within the solidarity movement in Britain and people are losing faith in traditional leaders such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Stop the War coalition. The PSC has refused to platform me to speak about my case and has ignored all requests to sign the Defend SOAS 2 public letter. However now PSC director Ben Jamal and Stop the War vice-chair Chris Nineham are being put on trial the same week that I am and are requesting support. How can you request support but not extend it? It’s clear that if we are going to get through this as a movement, if we are going to build from this and be stronger and be able to continue this fight, we have to stand together in defence of people who are being criminalised by the state for supporting Palestinian liberation. If we let the repression slide, there will be no movement to speak of, so we have to do this work together.
RS: The Australian ruling class has largely been able to stave off economic crises to the levels seen in the US and Western Europe, using huge resource extraction. As such, the ruling class in Australia feels relatively safe and has not yet had to employ the same level of repression as we see in those countries, including Britain, but of course that doesn’t mean it will remain that way. We extend our solidarity to comrades around the world fighting state repression. In terms of the SOAS 2, what can we do from here to support the case?
Sarah: I know the situation in Australia is very different, but as crises deepen we’re going to see these powers being used in places they haven’t necessarily been used before and it’s important to have the knowledge and experience from comrades in other parts of the world in terms of how we can organise and defend ourselves and what tools are available. It’s important to maintain these links of course to continue fighting for Palestine.
There are a few things you can do as individuals to help us raise awareness. In other cases, there have been protests outside of British embassies around the world to coincide with court dates. You can post on your social media, sharing the word far and wide, not just about SOAS 2 but about all of us who are being criminalised.
You can follow the SOAS 2 Instagram page (found here), sign our petition (found here) and if you are an organisation or an individual with a profile you can sign our open letter (found here).
Defend the right to defend Palestine!
Defend the SOAS 2!
Ria Evelyn
