Criminal damage: naughty but nice and no crime if goods are bound for Israel

I reported a few weeks ago on what I called a Raytheon re-run. Well news just in has it that 5 activists in Brighton have been acquitted of charges arising out of them causing £180 k worth of damage to a factory manufacturing arms for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel. Apparently the news hasn't yet been deemed fit to print by Brighton's Argus newspaper but The Guardian has run the story:

Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.

The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.

The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.........

In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that "you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time".

The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that "all democratic paths had been exhausted" before the activists embarked on their action.

Tony Greenstein has more on this over at his blog.