Pro-Palestine student protesters convicted of trespassing at their own uni

As she set up camp inside her university building on the night of 14 November 2024, Ava* expected she would wake up to a knock from campus security. What the 20-year-old had not anticipated was at least a dozen police officers swooping in on her group of pro-Palestine protesters. For the next 11 months her life would be put on pause – an ordeal that has culminated in a criminal conviction that jeopardises her hopes of one day working with children.

The undergraduate was one of 10 people to be found guilty of aggravated trespass at Loughborough Magistrates’ Court last month (31 October), almost a year to the day after they occupied a University of Leicester building to protest the institution’s links to Israeli military suppliers. It is thought to be the first trial in over a decade involving students who had occupied a building on their own campus, and one the university’s teaching union worries sets a concerning precedent in the clampdown on campus activism.

From the witness box, defendant Charlie* spoke passionately about the motive behind the occupation. In May 2024, students at Leicester joined in the global wave of activists setting up encampments on their campuses to pressure their universities to divest from companies allegedly complicit in the slaughter of Palestinians.

Around this time, the death toll had surpassed 36,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and 1.7 million Palestinians had been displaced. The International Court of Justice had also made its interim ruling in South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide.

Students had “extensively” researched The University of Leicester’s links to Israel, the court was told, and senior leaders had initially engaged in discussions with students about how they could address their concerns. These links include an alleged £7.5 million contract between the engineering department and Rolls Royce, who make components for F-35 bomber jets (a University of Leicester spokesperson did not comment on this alleged contract). They also include an IT contract with Hewlett Packard Enterprise which, according to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, is a supplier of surveillance technology to the Israeli government.

By November last year, the university “had stopped engaging with students about its links with Israel, [and] by protesting it was hoped it would engage with students once more,” the court was told. So at around 10pm on 14 November 2024, the group of 11 protesters entered the 18-storey Attenborough Tower, and roped shut the doors to the building, which was accessible to the public during the day and only to students and staff at night. In the morning, Charlie told the court they anticipated that a university official, upon noticing the occupation, would attempt to speak to them. Instead, they were “shocked” to find police had been called, the court heard.

Geoff Green, the university registrar, told the court that he checked the perimeter of the building on the morning of 15 November, after being notified of the protest, and saw the doors had been roped shut. As he had no prior notice of the protest, no knowledge of how many people were in the building, and was concerned about general safety, he called the police, as he could not engage with the protesters himself.

Joseph Choonara, a lecturer at Leicester and co-chair of its University and College Union branch, is no stranger to campus activism. As a student at Cambridge in the 90s, he occupied its graduation hall, Senate House, to protest the introduction of tuition fees. He recalls being confronted by a “fairly confident” university management representative who presented him with the key to the building and told him: “You can occupy it as long as you want.” It never even occurred to them to call the police.

Flash forward nearly three decades and the academic took the stand as a defence witness on behalf of the Leicester 11, who had similarly occupied their university’s most prominent building. Choonara told the court that no one reached out to him during or after the occupation, which only lasted one night, to complain about the disruption caused.

“The mood among my members, or all that I picked up from them, was overwhelmingly sympathy for the students, and a degree of anger at the arrest that had taken place,” Choonara told me, describing the convictions as “absolutely scandalous” and a worrying development in “a shift towards the criminalisation of protest.”

“Occupations have been part of the repertoire of protest for students for over 100 years,” he continued. “The way that these are normally dealt with is through negotiation, discussion, and taking students seriously. At the very worst, you’d expect the security team on campus to deal with it.” Likening these student activists to those who occupied buildings in protest against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid, he said they are on the “right side of history” and should be celebrated, not criminalised. Instead, their arrests and resulting trial have had a “deadening” effect on students’ sense of their freedom to speak out over these issues.

As she waited for the judge’s verdict, Ava was confident she would be acquitted. During the week-long trial, lawyers representing the defendants – who Liberty Investigates has chosen not to name, over fears they will be targeted and pending a possible appeal – argued that the group were not trespassing and the university did not attempt to engage with them prior to calling the police.

But district judge Rahim Allen-Khimani would accept this argument only in relation to one of the 11 defendants – a PhD student who was the only one to take the stand. The 24-year-old had been put forward to give evidence on behalf of the group, a means of saving the court time on similar testimony from all 11 on trial, the court heard. Allen-Khimani found her not guilty after concluding, on her evidence, that she individually had permission to be in the building and “was not given proper notice to leave”. As the other defendants did not testify, the judge said he could not assume they had similar permission to enter the building and that the university was obliged to first ask them to leave.

There were gasps of disbelief as the judge told the remaining co-defendants – nine of whom ranged in age from 19 to 26 (the other is 36) – they had been found guilty of aggravated trespass. Ava clasped her head in her hands. “It’s just such an insane response,” she said shortly after the hearing. “Just for sitting in my own university building, wanting them to cut ties with a genocidal settler-colonial project.” The 10 convicted protesters were fined and handed conditional discharges which will show up on future DBS checks. Some of them have ambitions to become lawyers and teachers, which could be derailed by this criminal conviction.

The case of the Leicester 11 is potentially the first of its kind in two decades. In 2005, six Lancaster University students were convicted following a demonstration targeting a conference on campus which included delegates from weapons firm BAE Systems. In 2014, charges against Birmingham students who occupied a building over the rise in tuition fees were dropped. In May 2024, 17 pro-Gaza protesters were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass following the occupation of the University of Oxford, but Thames Valley Police ultimately took no further action.

To be convicted of aggravated trespass, prosecutors must prove two things: that you are on private land without permission, and that you were intentionally disrupting ‘lawful activities’ (such as lectures) from taking place. Over the years, the defences that protesters can rely on against this charge have diminished. Since a controversial 2022 ruling, the courts no longer need to consider whether a conviction would curtail defendants’ protest rights.

After the hearing, defence barrister SJ Ewart said: “Over the last few years, there has been an undeniable crackdown on protest across almost every state institution. That includes the way that protesters are dealt with by the police, and the way that they are prosecuted. The offences they are charged with are far more serious than they used to be. There’s more legislation available, the sentencing framework is now harsher and the defences available to defend yourself are being limited.” The convictions of these young people are a continuation of this broader trend, she added, which has worsened with the state’s response to pro-Palestinian protesters.

A University of Leicester spokesperson said: “The university is committed to the free exchange and expression of ideas within the law and the right of our staff and students to question and challenge in the pursuit of truth and knowledge. We also have a responsibility to the wellbeing and safety of our entire community.”

They added: “As this protest was not carried out in line with our code of conduct or procedures around protests, action was taken, in line with our policies, to ensure the safety of all users of the campus.”

Now faced with the decision of whether to appeal her conviction, one thing for Ava is certain: “The university has completely failed in its duty of care. They’ve caused us quite a lot of stress.”

The university handed members of the group a temporary exclusion order banning them from campus pending a disciplinary investigation, which remained in place until this summer.

Having missed out on huge chunks of tuition, Ava has taken a year out of her studies in an effort to catch up.

“It’s just really shocking to see from a university, of all institutions,” she said. “Especially a university that really prides itself on activism. Their tagline is literally ‘Citizens of Change’.”

*Names changed

A version of this article was published with Dazed Magazine.