Roger Hallam, the 58-year-old co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five year in prison over conspiracy to organize illegal protests, Sky News reported Thursday.
Judge Christopher Hehir also sentenced four other defendants to serve time four years in prison for the same act, the outlet reported. These sentences are thought to be the toughest levied against peaceful protests so far, the outlet added. (RELATED: Wealthy Hollywood Big Shot Justifies Vandalizing Stonehenge To Save The Climate)
“The plain fact is that each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic,” Hehir said to the defendants, the outlet reported. “You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change,” the judge added. The judge told Hallam that he was “the theoretician, the ‘ideas’ man. In my judgement you sit at the very highest level of the conspiracy.”
Prosecutors had alleged that the defendants conspired to block London’s M25 motorway for four days straight in November 2022, the outlet reported. The prosecutors told the court that protests organized by these men cost the economy at around $990,000 and that the cost to London’s Metropolitan Police was over $1.4 million, Sky News reported.
They arrived at this figure by calculating the considerable hours of vehicle delay, affected number of vehicles, and total time the motorway was allegedly “compromised,” the outlet noted. A police officer was also injured when he was knocked off his motorbike during one of the protests on Nov. 9, 2022, Sky News reported.
Hallam was arrested three times during the judicial proceeding for disobeying the orders of the judge, the BBC reported. “The corruption of our judges by the carbon state has crossed a line in the sand,” Hallam said, the outlet reported. “We only have a limited amount of time to halt the unimaginable horrors of climate and social collapse – and to save our democracy,” the climate activist added.
Five environmental activists whose protests blocked part of the M25 in England for four days are jailed for at least four years each https://t.co/bleHUE0CTj
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 18, 2024
Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are direct action climate change groups. Just Stop Oil vandalized two private jets in June at an airfield that they erroneously believed Taylor Swift’s jet had landed. Two activists also vandalized Stonehedge in the same month.
