LONDON
The British government on Friday lost its bid to block a legal challenge to the Palestine Action ban after one of the group’s senior members got a green light from an appeals court.
Huda Ammori, a co-founder of the group, was given the go-ahead to seek a High Court challenge against the government's ban at the Royal Courts of Justice.
Ammori has been seeking to overturn the Home Office’s move to make it a criminal offense to be a member of or express support for the pro-Palestine Action.
Following today's green light, she said the government lost its appeal and failed to stop the legal challenge to the ban.
"That means the Judicial Review will go ahead on November 25-27th. Not only that, but we won TWO MORE grounds to argue the illegality of the ban. Huge victory," she wrote on US social media company X.
Amnesty International welcomed the permission, saying that it is in the public interest for the ban to be subject to full judicial scrutiny.
"There are serious human rights concerns around the proscription decision and the consequences it has had on free speech and assembly rights," Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s director of campaigns and communications, said in a statement.
She added: "Amnesty International UK and Liberty will be intervening in the case to raise our urgent concerns about the disproportionate use of the government’s terrorism powers in proscribing Palestine Action."
Palestine Action was banned in July under the UK’s 2000 Terrorism Act, which led to the arrests of hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters for holding signs or showing support for the group.
Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, and rendered it largely uninhabitable.