Filton Six Found Not Guilty of Aggravated Burglary in Palestine Action Case
Six UK Palestine Action activists, known as the Filton Six, have been found not guilty of the aggravated burglary charges they were hit with 17 months ago after breaking into the Filton R&D facility of Elbit Systems—Israel’s largest weapon manufacturer. Having been in remand for 17 months—meaning incarceration without bail, while not having been formally charged with any crimes—they then faced an 8-week jury trial.
After deliberating for 36 hours and 34 minutes, the jury came to a verdict for the six defendants, Charlotte Head (29), Samuel Corner (23), Leona Kamio (30), Fatema Zainab Rajwani (21), Zoe Rogers (22), Jordan Devlin (31):
CHARGE: Aggravated Burglary
VERDICT: All Defendants — NOT GUILTY
CHARGE: Criminal Damage
VERDICT: All Defendants — NO VERDICT
CHARGE: Violent Disorder
VERDICT: Head, Corner, Kamio — NO VERDICT; Rajwani, Rogers, Devlin — NOT GUILTY
Aside from those three charges, Samuel Corner was singularly accused of Grievous Bodily Harm With Intent, the result being NO VERDICT. For this reason, he has not been released with the other five, remaining unjustly imprisoned; Head, Kamio, Rajwani, Rogers, and Devlin were released with “strict conditions.
The No Verdict results now require the prosecution to make a decision: either drop the charges of Criminal Damage, Violent Disorder, and Grievous Bodily Harm, or call for a retrial.
At the same time that dozens of other imprisoned Palestine Action-linked activists had been on hunger strike, British politicians are trying to pass a new law that is a flagrant violation of one’s rights: cutting the right to a jury trial.
The documents related to this repressive proposal were leaked back in November of 2025, around the same time the trial of the Filton Six began. David Lammy, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister—the same man who had cruelly ignored all requests to meet with the now-victorious Palestine Action Hunger Strikers—is one of a few UK politicians spearheading this.
The BBC, which obtained the leaked documents, reported that, if Parliament eventually approves of this proposal, “defendants who are likely to receive a sentence of three years or less would no longer be able to choose a jury trial under Lammy’s proposals,” though this would not apply to murder, robbery, and rape cases.
According to Lammy and other supporters, this proposal is intended to alleviate the backlog of tens of thousands of trials and “tackle delays of justice,” which is quite confounding—how would taking away the right to a jury trial, and putting sentencing into the hands of judges, who have agendas to push, allow justice to prevail?
This attempt to cut jury trials has been met with resistance, from Labour MPs to the masses. During the period of jury deliberation, supporters of the Filton Six showed their support, pasting posters on bus stops that say, “The jury decide not the judge,” “Jury equity is when a jury acquits someone on moral grounds,” and: “Jurors can give a not guilty verdict even when they believe a defendant has broken the law.”
Sources:
https://realmedia.press/filton-verdict/
https://realmedia.press/filton-index/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5lxg2l0lqo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp87pl83nvko
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxq3g9g4eyo
US Tariff Threats Choke Cuba’s Fuel Supply
Cuba has warned international airlines not to expect to refuel at Cuban airports from Feb. 10 through March 11. The shortage follows Trump’s executive order declaring Cuba an “extraordinary threat” and threatening tariffs on any country that supplies it with oil, directly or indirectly.
As fuel deliveries slow and restrictions on fuel sales are put in place, the tourism industry suffers, school days in Cuba are shortened, public transportation, hospitals, emergency services, and food distribution are disrupted, and state-owned companies reduce the workweek to four days.
The White House describes the escalation as a response to Cuba’s alignment with China, Russia, and Iran. Russia has called the situation “critical” and accused the US of “suffocating” the island.
As oil suppliers face the choice to either supply Cuba with critical fuel or maintain access to the US economy, it remains unclear for how long the people of Cuba will be forced to suffer the consequences.
Sources:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/09/cuba-airlines-fuel-energy-oil-us-trump-pressure.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/cuba-roll-out-rationing-plan-us-moves-block-fuel-supply-2026-02-05/
Mass Protests Erupt in Olympic Milan Against ICE and Israel
Ten thousand people gathered in Milan on Saturday during the Winter Olympics to protest the economic waste of the event, the environmental damage involved in the construction of the games, as well as Israel’s participation and the presence of US ICE agents acting as the security detail for JD Vance.
Ahead of the opening ceremony, Italy passed a law allowing police to detain people for up to 12 hours when there are “reasonable grounds” to believe they may act as agitators and disrupt peaceful protests.
One protester who was interviewed on the day of the opening ceremony said,
“It’s not only that I don’t like what they are doing to immigrants, I also don’t like what they are doing to protesters,” said Andrea Cucuzza, 18. “That’s why we are protesting. They don’t like manifestations, protests? Then we are doing one.”
On Saturday, protesters set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge near the Olympic Village. Police responded with a brutal crackdown, throwing tear gas and deploying a water cannon against them.
In addition, Italy launched a terrorism investigation in response to the sabotage of a railway in Bologna in which railway cables were cut to prevent trains from operating.
Sources:
On February 4th, the CIA quietly unpublished the CIA World Factbook without warning. The World Factbook was first launched in 1962 for US intelligence officers to keep a detailed tab on foreign nations and their economies, resources, and militaries. It had proved so useful that the repository was shared with other federal agencies, released to the American public in print in 1975, and posted to the CIA.gov website for a worldwide audience in 1997, allowing researchers, journalists, teachers, students, and librarians to freely read and reference its contents. On Wednesday, the CIA posted an memo honoring the legacy of the factbook but did not offer any reason for its sudden termination.
This news comes in the wake of a sustained effort by Trump’s White House to cut thousands of staff from the CIA and downsize the agency. Director John Ratcliffe has led the restructuring of the agency in response to Trump’s direction to eliminate “politicization” or, in other words, end programs that do not advance its core mission: neutralizing national security threats. According to Ratcliffe, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, as well as drug cartels and terrorist organizations represent the greatest rivals to US empire, and the CIA is “not where it’s supposed to be” in gathering intelligence on those threats.
While many have relied on the World Factbook as one of the most authoritative statistical databases of the world’s countries and their populations, the factbook is far from neutral. The CIA created it to help the US empire manage oppressed nations during a high tide of global anti-imperialist struggle, analyzing them through capitalist metrics of development and categories useful for US geopolitical strategy. Today, this arm of state propaganda has now been ostensibly dissolved amidst a reconfiguration of the intelligence agency. However, a key window into the cerebral calculations of US empire has been shuttered with it.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/us/cia-world-factbook-countries-cec
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/
Behind Enemy Lines 