Three young women were prosecuted under terrorism charges for having paraglider imagery at the first big Gaza protest after October 7th in London. Obviously the whole thing was a deliberate test of new, increasingly vague anti-terror laws and designed to have a chilling effect on the protests by the state.

The whole thing was a mess though. Their legal defense was piss poor and they had changed their story from stating someone else must have put the images on their backs and placards, despite the fact this would be easily disprovable given the camera coverage and would actually throw other protesters under the bus and create an excuse for more paranoia and searching for the possibly really Hamas group doing it in the crowds etc. Pretty dreadful idea, a bit like doing it in the first place. Some of the evidence used that they had changed their story, was also based on what they'd said to the police during interviews, meaning they were daft enough to think they could talk their way out of it with the cops after being arrested.

They were found guilty and the judge gave them 12 month conditional discharge, meaning that the offense was considered very minor and that they'll receive no further punishment so long as conditions are met. I believe it was no further potential public order breaches or potentially inflammatory statements in person or online. In other words, go home and shut up for a year if you don't want more trouble.

To be clear, these were three women in their 20s who will now have a terrorism related conviction on their records which will absolutely make their lives much harder in everything from getting jobs to travelling. They will now be on every watchlist and spook database imaginable. This is going to fucking suck for them, our terror laws (and public order laws) are a bad fascist joke, and it was all over three pictures of a fucking paraglider.

As for the Novara Media angle, Aaron Bastani got criticism at the time for quote tweeting a post condemning the original picture and criticising using the imagery. I haven't seen any to suggest his or Novara Media's 'help for police' etc goes beyond this and talking about it a time when the entire national media was focussing on it. If police compelled them to hand over footage of the protests they held they'd almost certainly have no choice but to do so, but even that I'm skeptical of happening because a) I haven't seen anyone actually allege that and b) they're too small to do their own reporting, create their own footage etc so it all comes from what's already publicly available online (and in this case already plastered over ever newspaper and news channel in Britain).

Regardless, as a side note, this is a good reminder not to upload uncensored protest footage, especially if you're an ostensibly left news organization or YouTube channel that may have footage that isn't already out there.

If anyone needs context about Novara Media on general they're a left news website and online media channel that's... alright. They employ a number of self-described communist and socialist writers, have been reasonably successful in getting those people onto traditional television media to put forward an alternative viewpoint (usually very well, despite being their to be the token or focus of establishment ire).

But in doing so they're also bad for over focusing on whatever the 'discourse' in the British press is at the time, as happened with Bastani's tweet here and most of their bad takes come from staying within the bounds of what's acceptable to say in the media British media class. For example, they were pretty shit on Ukraine / Russia, especially early on when it came to simply not engaging with the recent history in Ukraine, NATO history etc. They still are, but have gotten more nuanced in a positive way since. Their closeness to the Corbyn movement at the time also gave them a lot of blind spots for platforming guests that absolutely weren't comrades or useful just because of their close proximity - crank and wrecker Paul Mason for one, although they have since been very critical of his mask-off NAFO Stan, wanna be intelligence asset schtick since, although it shouldn't have taken them so long to see exactly what he is.

They're mostly, whatever. Sorry if that was long.