UK court clears woman of voicing support for Hamas in university speech

A London court has cleared a British woman of supporting Palestinian group Hamas in a speech she gave outside her university in 2023.

The jury at the Central Criminal Court, more commonly known as the Old Bailey, on Friday found Sarah Cotte, 22, not guilty of expressing support for the group that’s designated a “terrorist” organisation under UK law.

Public prosecutors had alleged that Cotte voiced support for Hamas two days after the group led the deadly attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

During a speech she gave outside the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London at the time, she expressed “unconditional solidarity” with the Palestinian resistance, the court was told. Prosecutors claimed this was a “thinly veiled reference” to Hamas.

Cotte repeatedly rejected attempts to equate the two, telling the court: “I don’t support Hamas and I have never supported Hamas. I was supporting the right to resist.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera after the verdict on Friday, Cotte said the court’s decision was a “testament to how people are feeling about British support for Zionism”.

“I never condemned the right to armed struggle in Palestine,” Cotte said. “I didn’t let them corner me and make this a conversation about what Zionists want to talk about.”

Instead, she said, “I used it as a platform to talk about what I thought was important, which was the Palestinian struggle, British support for Zionism and our rights as people of conscience.”

Hamas was officially proscribed in its entirety by the UK government in late 2021, when its political wing was also banned. Its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, has been proscribed since 2001. Those found guilty of supporting such groups can face up to 14 years in prison.

On the final day of the week-long trial on Friday, Cotte again denied expressing support for Hamas during her speech at SOAS while she was a student there and argued that she had only expressed support for Palestinians’ “right to resist”.

“I think that the killing of civilians is always a tragedy. At the same time, I don’t think it is a surprise,” she told jurors about her comments regarding Hamas’s October 7 attack.

“I think saying it is understandable and agreeing with it is two different things, so I think it is understandable and could be justified,” she explained.

“I don’t think it’s my role to impose conditions on the Palestinian people and their struggle,” Cotte added.

In comments to Al Jazeera after the verdict, she said: “This victory will re-energise the whole of the solidarity movement … We stand with the Palestinian people and their right to be agents in their struggle for freedom.”

Responding to the not guilty verdict, Anas Mustapha, head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said the ruling showed that “ordinary people will not accept the criminalisation of speech in support of the Palestinian right to resist occupation.”

“Sarah Cotte has been found not guilty, and we are delighted for her, her family, and everyone who stood alongside her through more than two and a half years of investigation and court proceedings,” Mustapha said.

Cotte gave the speech on October 9, 2023. She was arrested over it on January 31, 2024. An earlier trial found her not guilty of a second charge of expressing support for Hamas in a WhatsApp group chat.