More than 300 people were detained during a demonstration in support of the banned group Palestine Action outside the US embassy in London, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Hundreds assembled at Nine Elms on Saturday, many carrying placards with slogans such as "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action." In an update issued on Sunday, the force said 325 arrests had been made, the BBC reported. Of that number, 320 were held under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of expressing support for a proscribed organisation, police said in a social media statement.
Why it matters
The weekend operation pushes the cumulative number of arrests linked to the group past 4,000, a figure that campaigners and civil liberties advocates say raises serious questions about how Britain polices political dissent. Palestine Action was outlawed in July 2025, and the latest round of detentions comes as the UK Supreme Court prepares to examine whether that prohibition should stand.
The scale of Saturday's policing also underlines how the ban has turned a single campaign group into one of the most litigated and protested-against designations in recent British memory. Each demonstration now produces arrests in the hundreds, and each batch of arrests feeds a wider argument about the balance between counter-terrorism powers and the right to protest.
Arrests continued into the evening
Officers kept making detentions well into Saturday night, escorting people to police vans for removal while sections of the crowd applauded. Some in the crowd chanted "Free, free Palestine," the BBC reported.
Among those taken away in the afternoon was Charles Allison, a 75-year-old retired lawyer who had travelled down from Cumbria to take part. He told the BBC he was concerned about civil liberties in the UK, describing them as being "devalued and watered down."
Allison said he hoped the Supreme Court justices would consider the longer-term consequences of the government's approach, though he acknowledged the protest itself might not sway them. He said he believed the proscription was unlawful and urged the court to reach the same conclusion.
The demonstration was one of a series organised around opposition to the ban. Defend Our Juries, which has been coordinating the protests, said the weekend's detentions brought the overall tally beyond 4,000 since the group was outlawed, a milestone it described as "truly dystopian."
Home Office figures cited by the BBC put arrests at 3,630 in the year to the end of June 2026. Adding the 134 people detained outside Westminster Magistrates Court earlier this year, plus those held on Saturday, gives a running total of 4,089.
Court review looms over the ban
The legal challenge now sits with the country's highest court. Palestine Action's co-founder was granted permission to appeal the designation, and the Supreme Court is due to review the ban under terrorism legislation.
That pending case gives the weekend's events a particular edge. Should the justices overturn the proscription, the legal basis for arrests of this kind would shift considerably, and the thousands of cases already processed would face fresh scrutiny. Should the ban be upheld, police are likely to continue treating public displays of support as arrestable conduct.
Amnesty International UK condemned the detentions and urged the government to withdraw the designation of Palestine Action. The organisation's intervention places it alongside the protest organisers in arguing that the ban is disproportionate.
The government has not signalled any intention to reverse course, and the Metropolitan Police have framed their actions as enforcement of legislation passed by Parliament.
For now, the numbers tell their own story: a single Saturday in south-west London produced more arrests than many entire protest movements generate in a year, and the total since the ban took effect has climbed past four thousand.
What to watch is the Supreme Court's review of the proscription, which will determine whether the enforcement pattern seen at Nine Elms continues or is unwound.
