SOAS 2’s Sarah Cotte walks free but will face September retrial

Sarah Cotte, one of the ‘SOAS 2’ defendants accused of supporting a banned group, has walked free from the Old Bailey but faces a retrial in September.

The judge discharged the jury in the first trial on 1 July after jurors refused to convict, but decided yesterday that Cotte would face a retrial, also at the Old Bailey, on 14 September. A defiant Cotte told gathered supporters that:

We know that we are on the side of justice. We are on the side of liberation. We are on the side of people who fight back, people who strive for a better world, people who want to build a different system. The British state is on the side of terrorism, it’s on the side of apartheid, it’s on the side of colonialism, it’s on the side of imperialism.

So we know where we stand. They know where they stand.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Revolutionary Communist Group (Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!) (@rcgfrfi)

SOAS — Lobby-driven charges

Cotte was accused of supporting a banned organisation after saying that Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against illegal occupation. This is entirely in agreement with international law. She faces two counts under Sec­tion 12 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 for the speech in Octo­ber 2023.

As so often, the Israel lobby was at the centre of the trouble. The charges were brought after a com­plaint by notorious “apartheid apologist” group ‘UK Law­yers for Israel‘ triggered a police raid on her home in the early hours of Janu­ary 2024.

During the now-abandoned trial, Cotte’s defence barrister had reminded jurors that her comments were com­pletely legal and described their duty to defend solid­ar­ity with Palestine as “an abso­lute neces­sity in a demo­cratic soci­ety.”

A spokesperson for the ‘Defend the Soas 2’ campaign group said after the trial that:

This trial has never been about justice; it is about intim­id­a­tion. The Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 is being deployed by a zion­ist­-sup­port­ing Labour gov­ern­ment pre­cisely as it was inten­ded: to sys­tem­at­ic­ally crim­in­al­ise anti­im­per­i­al­ists and silence solid­ar­ity with lib­er­a­tion move­ments.

While Israeli war crim­in­als enter Bri­tain fresh from com­mit­ting gen­o­cide in Gaza without a glance from the police, a young woman is dragged through the courts for speak­ing the truth. Sarah did not break under the pro­sec­u­tion’s pres­sure, and neither will we.

Featured image via DefendSoas2