Eileen Weinberg

Geneva Cornavin station Free free Palestine

At the time I wrote of Rajiv Menon KC's closing speech for the defence of Charlotte Head: "This is the one of the greatest legal speeches – including historical speeches – I have ever read." He now faces loss of career and two years in jail for it. craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/…

Contempt proceedings against a top human rights barrister are having a “chilling effect” across the British bar, leading lawyers tell Declassified. Rajiv Menon KC is accused of violating the judge’s orders in the trial of six Palestine Action activists. declassifieduk.org/contempt-case-…

Rajiv Menon was my barrister when I appeared before the Tribunal investigating police surveillance of left and women's groups. His opening speech was brilliant. He is on of this country's most gifted barristers, a descendant of Mike Mansfield. His prosecution is an appalling instance of some judges prostrating themselves before the needs of the state as they did a number of times against Irish and Muslim prisoners. One hope they might have learnt from how they treated the Irish. Doesn't seem to be the case.

It may not be fully appreciated that the UK is not only seeing unprecedented treatment of direct action protestors as “terrorists”, but a lawyer representing them is himself being prosecuted for his remarks in court. Here his fellow lawyers explain what is happening and express solidarity. A crucial case for justice and the rule of law in the UK.

(1/3) Garden Court North members express solidarity with Rajiv Menon KC, a highly respected silk and member of @gardencourtlaw, who faces prosecution for contempt of court following his closing speech in a high-profile and politically sensitive criminal trial.

One part of the travesty of the Filton 6 actionists’ trial and retrial that has received less attention but is very important: Rajiv Menon, King’s Council, barrister for a member of the Filton 6, is being persecuted on a wholly unprecedented charge of contempt of court, carrying a punishment of up to two years imprisonment, for mentioning legal history and principles of law that allow juries to make independent decisions on conscience that Judge Johnson ruled out. In the first trial’s closing statement to the jury, Menon pointed out the case that established this principle from 1670 and quoted the public plaque outside the Old Bailey (the central court in London) commemorating the case. He also reminded the jurors six times that the judge could not direct them to convict. The jury exonerated all the defendants in that first trial. Now they have been retried and convicted on some charges. It sounds like Rajiv Menon is being punished for being extremely good at his job and for explaining the actual law relevant to the rights of the jury that this establishment judge close to the UK police and security services unethically suppressed to secure a political conviction to protect Elbit Systems. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Judge Johnson set up the rules and judgments precisely to engineer a conviction to circumvent the propensity of juries to acquit actionists. Then he plans to sentence them under extremely harsh terrorism laws by manipulating unjustly what jurors could know. Rajiv Menon initially disrupted that plan in the first trial. So now the judge and state are going after him. We must support Rajiv Menon, a fantastic and principled barrister, and the actionists against the UK state’s punitive crackdown on those using democratic rights to protest and stop the Israeli arms industry from facilitating war crimes, illegal occupation and genocide. The corrupt and complicit political establishment in the UK has shown themselves willing to evacuate rights to free speech and assembly, jury trials, press freedom and a host of democratic rights for all citizens simply to protect Israel’s impunity and their own complicity in the genocide. Support Rajiv Menon for defending pro-Palestine actionists and condemn what the UK courts and injustice system have done to jury trials and democratic rights!

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One of my most popular articles ever included a long extract from a powerful closing speech by barrister Rajiv Menon during a Palestine Action trial in January. In the end, the jury refused to convict the six defendants. Menon is now on trial for that closing speech – for reminding the jury that they had a 350-year-old right in law to follow their conscience in reaching a verdict, even if it meant defying a direction from the judge to convict. Paradoxically, Menon joked in his speech that, because of that earlier legal principle, the judge, unlike his counterpart in 1670, could not lock them, the jurors, up were they to choose to follow their consciences. Instead, the judge is seeking to lock up the barrister. Does 2026 qualify as an improvement on 1670? It is believed that this is the first time a barrister has been tried for comments made to a jury in his closing speech. That should serve as a potent reminder of just us how authoritarian the current political moment is, and of how quickly long-established legal rights are being dismantled to protect British collusion in genocide. Read my article – and the part of the speech for which Menon is being tried – here: jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-01-1…

@Lzldn2 @zoe_habibi @LanceForman @zarahsultana Exactly. One day there will be justice for the Nakba.

@zoe_habibi @LanceForman @zarahsultana A response to an attack cannot be genocide you low IQ inbred twerp

I actually care about all human lives Joanne, but I’m wondering if you actually do? Have you mentioned the genocide of Palestinians even once or do their lives not matter to you? Using today's events to score political points is disgusting. Shame on you.

@Pompeii_Ashes @CraigMurrayOrg @wickerisle Obviously, if the motivation was Russia made them do it, the Court would want to include that. They got away with manufacturing the Salisbury false flag despite the ridiculous narrative, they aren’t going to press their luck.

You people saying they were paid to do it, just curious, with what motive? If we assume the idea was that they wouldn't get caught, there would be a case of unknowns having tried to burn Starmer's car and house. What for? The other alternative is that they had a personal motive. What motive?

The trial of the Ukrainian "ahem" male models who set fire to various private property associated with Keir Starmer, has been told that the trial will exclude any mention of the reasons why they did it. Now there's a shock.

@SaulStaniforth @ZackPolanski @itvnews That Balls takes so much offense to a simple statement of facts says everything

Well done to @ZackPolanski for calling out the fact he was being interviewed by a former Lab minister & husband of the current foreign secretary! Since the start of this year #GMB is produced by @itvnews. How can they think this is tenable? Oh & Ed took it in good grace (not)

Israel playing "spoiler" to fake peace the US obviously has no intention of ever making or keeping is literally one of Washington's own plans. See here: brookings.edu/wp-content/upl… Chapter 5: Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or encouraging an Israeli Military Strike "The US would encourage -- and perhaps even assist -- the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel." The US has already repeatedly used this option both to provoke the previous war in 2025 and again throughout this most recent war - blaming "Israel" for strikes on Iranian targets Israel could only have hit with US mission support. It is very possible the US will pose as wanting "peace" and have Israel do everything up to and possibly including the use of nuclear weapons against Iran to afford the US plausible deniability. Israel is an extension of US geopolitical and military power - would not exist without US support - just like Ukraine. Don't let people get away with blaming only Israel and granting the US impunity. Both are guilty and both must be exposed, stopped, and held accountable.

30 yrs aftr Norman Finkelstein wrote this article, “First the Cherokee, now the Palestinian,” nothing has changed. Current Affairs re-released the essay, which shows the similarities between tactics used against my Cherokee ancestors and Palestinians today.currentaffairs.org/news/first-the…

Iranian Ambassador: I think that, once more, this war has shown that the United States will not bring security and stability to the region. In response to the representative of the United States, I only want to refer to some remarks by the U.S. president, who initiated this war of aggression against Iran. On March 21st, he threatened to hit and obliterate Iran’s power plants. On March 28th, he escalated this threat, saying he wanted to blow up and completely obliterate critical infrastructure, including power plants, oil facilities, Kharg Island, and desalination installations. On April 1st, he declared his intention to bring Iran “back to the Stone Age,” explicitly threatening to strike all electric generating facilities. On April 5th, he again openly threatened to target civilian infrastructure, stating that “Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day. There will be nothing like it.” And two days later, he resorted to language that is not only deeply irresponsible but profoundly alarming, declaring that “the whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back.” Such rhetoric is unbefitting of any political leader, let alone the head of a permanent member of the Council entrusted with the maintenance of international peace and security.

@MatryoshkaTips @CraigMurrayOrg Iran is being attacked in an unprovoked war of aggression. They have every right to control the vessels that approach its boarders.

If the principle of ‘freedom of navigation’ is selectively applied by Western powers, as you rightly point out with examples like Gaza, Cuba, and Venezuela, does that hypocrisy justify Iran closing or threatening the Strait of Hormuz, which would directly endanger the global energy supply and the economies of dozens of neutral countries that had no role in those earlier blockades?

AJ Inside Story on Hormuz. In the mildest way I smuggle in massive truth bombs. Link in Reply "There's a tremendous hypocrisy about this. The Western world has got very upset about freedom of navigation all of a sudden. But they weren't at all worried about the Israeli blockade of Gaza which has gone on for something like 15 years. Or the US blockade of Cuba which is starving people at the moment. Or the US seizures of tankers out of Venezuela"

Western hypocrisy is unmatched.

@lugaricano In other words, the so-called "extreme" left (ie, the actual left) was correct all along: The US empire's goal is to extract rent from the rest of the world, at gunpoint, to protect corporate monopolies and enrich a few capitalist oligarchs. You were simply too naive to see it.

Cops have twice raided Quaker meeting houses to arrest people- and seize their phones/laptops - without so far charging anyone. Are we seeing pre-emptive policing to make the very idea of protest impossible? prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/identity…

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