Legal experts are among thousands who have signed a formal complaint accusing the presiding judge in a Palestine Action case of bias and discriminatory conduct.
The complaint, which will be filed on Friday by the campaign group, Defend Our Juries (DOJ), with the Judicial Conduct Office, comes ahead of a hearing on Monday on the defendants’ application for the recusal of Justice Jeremy Johnson on the grounds of apparent bias and abuses of process.
Charlotte Head, Leona Kamio, Samuel Corner and Fatema Rajwani risk facing sentencing as terrorists on 12 June, despite being convicted by a jury of criminal charges.
The complaint, which has garnered over 3,000 signatures, including by lawyers, law professors, retired police officers and magistrates, alleges that throughout the two trials, Johnson “betrayed a loss of objectivity and a personal animosity towards the defendants and the Palestinian cause, incompatible with the role of a judge”.
It alleges that Johnson’s bias was evident from the outset of the trial, when he decided to treat the defendants’ conscientious motivations for breaking into the factory - to destroy weapons that would be used by Israel to kill Palestinians - as an aggravating factor in their sentencing.
