Police bodycam footage allegedly shows a Palestine Action activist attacking police with a sledgehammer during a break-in at an Israel-based defence firm’s UK site, a court has heard.
Prosecutors say six members of the group wearing red boiler suits used a prison van to gain entry to an Elbit Systems UK factory in Bristol during a “meticulously organised” attack in the early hours of 6 August last year.
Charlotte Head, 29, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, Fatema Rajwani, 21, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31, are jointly accused of aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder. They deny all charges.
Corner denies an additional charge of causing grievous bodily harm. He is accused of striking police sergeant Kate Evans on the back with a sledgehammer at the scene, leaving her with a fracture to her lumbar spine.
PS Evans, PC Aaron Buxton and PC Peter Adams gave evidence at Woolwich Crown Court on Monday and jurors were shown police bodycam footage of officers confronting the suspects.
Officers saw a security guard covered in foam as they arrived at the factory, where activists had allegedly splattered red paint around and were smashing the company’s property with sledgehammers, the jury heard.
One clip shows a man, allegedly Corner, swinging a sledgehammer at PC Buxton as he lay on his back amid a struggle with another suspect.
“As he has reached us he has swung the sledgehammer multiple times towards me,” PC Buxton said.
“I was scared. I believe it made contact with my right calf and my work radio. I had quite considerable pain down that area of my leg following it and also I had some bruising come up.”
PC Buxton told jurors he then saw the man strike PS Evans in the back as she was kneeling down trying to arrest another suspect.
Giving evidence, PS Evans said: “I can remember looking up and PC Adams for some reason had a shocked face on him, and then I had a pain in my back.
“It was just a massive shock vibrating through my whole back, a thud on my back through my whole body extended down to my legs.”
She added: “I think I was stunned to begin with, I didn’t know what it was, I had no idea and I can remember looking round and seeing a male with a sledgehammer behind me.”
PS Evans told jurors she thought her “spine was shattered”, saying: “I can remember putting my right foot down and pain shot up.”
When other officers arrived and helped to arrest the suspects, PS Evans went to check on Corner when he complained that his handcuffs were too tight, jurors heard.
“We still have a duty of care to make sure no one is in pain,” she said. “They seemed perfectly fine to me.”
PS Evans said that Corner was accusing officers of being “complicit in genocide” and said “something about murdering babies”.
“I said something like ‘you have just hit me with a sledgehammer’, and he didn’t recognise that at all, he just started telling me I’m complicit in genocide again,” she added.
PS Evans said she needed help getting in and out of the shower after the incident and took painkillers to deal with the “intense pain”.
Jurors have heard that PS Evans was unable to work for three months after the incident.
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The court has heard that Elbit Systems UK manufactures defence technology equipment and is a UK-registered company whose parent company is based in Israel.
Jurors have been told that the allegations in this case came before Palestine Action’s proscription under terrorism laws in June.
Prosecutors told the jury that the ban is not relevant to the evidence in this case.
The trial continues.
