The Electronic Intifada 10 November 2025
Sean Middlebrough was arrested by British police in January 2024.
Palestine Action activist Sean Middlebrough, 33, nicknamed Shibby, has absconded from a UK prison after being released on temporary bail for his brother’s wedding.
In a statement exclusive to The Electronic Intifada, Middlebrough said he was not a terrorist and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
After a four-day conditional release on 23 October, Middlebrough did not return to Wandsworth prison in London. Despite regular police checks at his home address, he managed to slip away without his family’s knowledge, sources confirmed to The Electronic Intifada.
Middlebrough, who is from Liverpool in northwest England, was on remand for a third time in connection with an August 2024 action at an Elbit weapons facility in Filton, a town near Bristol in southwest England.
Elbit Systems is one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers and its British subsidiary, Elbit Systems UK, operates 16 sites across the country.
During the Filton action, protestors allegedly drove a van into the factory and damaged Israeli weapons developed there. Middlebrough is accused of causing over $2.5 million in damages.
It resulted in, among other things, the destruction of armed quadcopters widely used by the Israeli military in its genocidal aggression in Gaza.
Six people were arrested on the spot, detained for 36 hours without legal representation or being able to contact family or the outside world, and charged with criminal damage, aggravated burglary and violent disorder. Further arrests by British counterterrorism police over the following year saw a total of 24 people detained in connection with the Filton action, including Middlebrough.
Grim conditions
Middlebrough, whose trial date is set for April 2026 and who had already spent a year in pre-trial detention, was facing a total of over 18 months on remand, far exceeding the six-month pre-trial custody time limit.
“I am not on the run. I am merely being sensible, refusing to be held as a prisoner of war of Israel in a British prison,” Middlebrough said in a statement obtained and verified by The Electronic Intifada. “Outrageously, 23 of my heroic and honorable co-defendants remain in prison following our kidnapping by counterterrorism police.”
The British government proscribed Palestine Action as a “terrorist group” on 5 July of this year, prompting a rare protest against the UK from the UN, which called the the banning order a “disturbing misuse of UK counterterrorism legislation.”
Of his arrest, Middlebrough said police used counterterrorist tactics despite him not being charged with terror offenses.
“We were raided, our families detained and guns pointed at our heads despite not being charged with any terror offenses,” Middlebrough said in the statement. “The UN has condemned our treatment as likely ‘enforced disappearance,’ while my co-defendants are indefinitely detained before facing trial.”
Huda Ammori said the terror connection was spurious.
“Whilst the Filton 24 don’t face terrorism charges, the [British prosecutors] say that their charges have a ‘terrorism connection,’ which means if convicted, the judge can increase their sentences and their conditions will become harsher,” Ammori said. “This is the first case in which direct action activists faced accusations of terrorism.”
Middlebrough described conditions in prison as grim and said he was made to share a one-person cell with a stranger.
“I was locked up for up to 23 hours a day. I was barely let out for an hour daily. At the start of my arrest, I didn’t receive proper food.”
“We are not terrorists”
Middlebrough got involved with Palestine Action in January 2022 to protest Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and its gross human rights violations.
In January 2024, he and five others were detained for allegedly plotting to shut the London Stock Exchange down. Middlebrough was remanded and charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance.
That was the second time he had been remanded to prison on charges that were later dropped.
The first was on 15 May 2023, the day Palestinians commemorate the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing that took place between 1947 and 1949 of two-thirds of the Palestinian people to make way for a Jewish majority in Palestine.
Two Palestine Action protestors forced the temporary closure of Pearson Engineering in Newcastle over its links to Israel. The British company was bought by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd, an Israeli arms company, in September 2022. The activists caused over $200,000 in damages during a 27-hour rooftop protest.
Though detained for 6 weeks in connection with the action, Middlebrough had his charges – of planning the action – dropped before trial.
“We are not terrorists,” Middlebrough told The Electronic Intifada. “I oppose terror and tyranny in all forms. When we witness a British- backed genocide of the Palestinian people, it is our moral and legal duty to act against it. This is why some of my comrades in the Filton 24 are on an active hunger strike for immediate bail and a fair trial.”
Six imprisoned Palestine Action campaigners have been on hunger strike since 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which saw the British empire promise a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.
“The best of us”
“They are the best of us, and we must rally behind their fight,” Middlebrough said about his fellow activists. “While I am free, I will raise their voice beyond the prison walls, for everything that they are and they stand for – a free Palestine!”
Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, accused the British government of using UK terrorism legislation as a political tool to repress those who act to prevent genocide while simultaneously shielding Israeli war criminals from prosecution.
“[Middlebrough] should not have been in prison, and neither should the 32 people currently detained for allegedly taking direct action to stop the genocide in Gaza,” Ammori told The Electronic Intifada.
Each of them, she added, faces up to two years on remand, far exceeding the pre-trial custody time limit.
Activists are being unjustly arrested in order to protect a foreign state engaged in genocide, Ammori said, prompting their hunger strike.
“We should all stand with each of them, however they choose to resist.”
Palestine Action is awaiting a judicial review of the group’s proscription, scheduled to be heard from 25-27 November.
Abubaker Abed is a journalist from Deir al-Balah refugee camp in Gaza.
