Numerous climate activists organized a sit-in demonstration in front of the Royal Courts of Justice located in central London.
Around 30 officers from the Metropolitan Police approached the Defend Our Juries protestors, requesting them to relocate to a designated protest zone after they had marched a short distance and obstructed traffic on the Strand.
Inside the courthouse, the Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales, along with two other prominent judges, were reviewing an appeal from 16 Just Stop Oil activists who argue that their sentences are “manifestly excessive.”
Prosecutors contended that the activists’ actions—such as climbing onto gantries on the M25 and tunneling beneath a road leading to an oil terminal—were deemed so “extreme” that the judges who sentenced them were justified in denying any leniency.
On Wednesday, Danny Friedman KC, one of the attorneys representing the activists, informed the Court of Appeal—which convenes at the Royal Courts of Justice—that some of these sentences are “the highest of their kind in contemporary British history.”
“They undertook their actions as an act of sacrifice,” he remarked.
In joint written arguments, lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) asserted that the sentences were “neither incorrect in law nor manifestly excessive.”
They maintained that showing leniency would not deter the activists from “engaging in increasingly disruptive actions.”
