LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – A British pro-Palestinian activist on trial for an attack on Israeli defense company Elbit said on Thursday she and her co-defendants wanted to cause “as much property damage as possible” but said she opposed violence.
Charlotte Head, 29, and five others are on trial at Woolwich Crown Court over what prosecutors say was a well-planned attack by Operation Palestine on an Elbit Systems UK facility in Bristol, southwest England, last August.
All six have been charged with aggravated burglary, violent disorder and criminal damage, with one of Hyde’s co-accused also accused of intending to hit a police officer with a sledgehammer causing grievous bodily harm.
They all deny the accusations. Hyde told jurors she and her co-defendants decided to take action because “everything else had failed.”
Hyde admitted that she drove a converted former prison van in the early hours of August 6, 2024, carrying other activists through a fence outside the factory and into the loading bay.
The plan, she said, was to “go in and destroy as many weapons as possible.”
Hyde’s lawyer, Rajiv Menon, asked her: “Have you ever been violent towards security or police officers?” She replied: “No, never.”
Hyde said she did not become involved in pro-Palestinian activities until the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, triggering a massive Israeli military response that Hyde called a “genocide.”
When the trial began last month, prosecutor Deanna Heer told jurors that one of the six defendants, 23-year-old Samuel Corner, hit a female officer in the back with a sledgehammer, fracturing her lumbar vertebrae.
Hyde was asked Thursday whether she would have participated in an operation against Elbit if she had known someone would be violent, and she said: “No, that was not part of the plan.”
The trial continues.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Gareth Jones)