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Participants in a London demonstration for a ceasefire in Gaza (archive)
Photo: Neil Hall / EPA
Three women in London have been found guilty of terror offenses for showing pictures of paragliders on the sidelines of a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The Islamist Hamas also used paragliders for its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
A week after the attack, two women, aged 29 and 26, had photos of paragliders taped to their backs during a rally in London. The third defendant, a 27-year-old, stuck a motif on the handle of a poster. They each received one year in prison, the sentence will be suspended, as the British news agency PA reported on Tuesday.
One of the defense attorneys argued in the trial that the women were only wearing parachute emojis and not photos of paragliders. In addition, images that relate to flying are known as symbols of peace in the region. Judge Tan Ikram, however, clearly disagreed in his verdict. “Seven days earlier, Hamas entered Israel using what the media described as paragliders. A sensible person would have seen and read that,” he said. The Crown Prosecution Service spoke of a “glorification of the actions” of Hamas.
At the same time, the judge made it clear that he did not consider the three women to be Hamas supporters. Rather, emotions boiled over in the days after the attack and the three crossed a line.
On October 7, an estimated 3,000 terrorists from Gaza's ruling Hamas and other extremist groups crossed the border in a concerted surprise attack and murdered around 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Around 240 hostages were taken to the Gaza Strip. Israel's military then carried out massive air strikes and deployed ground troops into the densely populated coastal strip.
lpz/dpa