My Prosecution for ‘Terrorism’ Required the Permission of Attorney General Richard Hermer

Who Passed the Decision to his Zionist Solicitor-General, Sarah Sackman, Vice-Chair of the  Jewish Labour Movement 2015-2024 - Bias? Perish the Thought

The Labour Files – Episode 1 – The Purge I Al Jazeera Investigations

The law is quite clear in respect of prosecutions under the Terrorism Act 2000. Under s.117(2A), in the event of a prosecution that relates to ‘a purpose wholly or partly connected with the affairs of a country other than the United Kingdom’ the consent of the Attorney General Lord Richard Hermer is required. In the event that he has a conflict of interest then he can hand the decision to the Solicitor General.

The Solicitor-General was Sarah Sackman, who was an officer of the Jewish Labour Movement, an ardently Zionist group, for 9 years. We don’t know for certain why Hermer passed the decision to Sackman but it would seem that it was his confession to the Jewish Chronicle that ‘I actively support a range of Jewish and Israeli organisations’ and that ‘I have dear family members currently serving in the IDF.’

Sackman however had no such scruples as you would expect from someone who is an ardent Zionist activist. Whereas Hermer has a record of being identified with human rights issues and opposed to the occupation of the West Bank, Sackman has never spoke out once against the Occupation, still less the genocide.

Sackman has been far more involved in things to do with Israel and Zionism as Vice Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement from 2015-24. She registered her position as JLM Vice-Chair in August 2014. It is not known exactly when she resigned but it’s possible that when she approved my prosecution she was still an office holder.

It is however clear that Sackman was personally involved in the JLM targeting me in the Labour Party for suspension and then expulsion in 2016. In the Leaked Labour Report that was issued in 2019 it was reported that Laura Murray from Corbyn’s office had emailed the head of the Governance & Legal Unit, John Stolliday, informing him of the JLM’s ‘frustration’ that mine and other cases had not been heard. The JLM had been pushing hard for our expulsion. As Vice-Chair Sackman could hardly have been unaware of this. The conflict of interest is blindingly obvious.

Saying what the British State Doesn't Want to Hear is Now 'Terrorism'

Sackman is supposed to reach a decision on cases like mine on the basis of what is in Britain’s national interest. The reality, as she has readily admitted, is that her allegiance is first and foremost to the Apartheid state.

Sackman served as a law clerk in the Israeli Supreme Court. Her grandfather Solomon Seruya was an Israeli ambassador to the Philipenes (1976-8). By her own admission she visited Israel on a yearly basis.

She has a maternal aunt and three cousins who live in Jerusalem. They will all have served in the IDF and today they are likely to be reservists. My statements supporting October 7 and the right of the Palestinians to self-defence against an occupation that has gone on for over 58 years, are not likely to have endeared me to her. 

Sackman is on record as saying that “The events of October 7 are the worst in my lifetime as a Jew,” To have her making the decision as to whether I or anyone else should be prosecuted is like putting Nick Griffin in charge of race relations or Harold Shipman in charge of the Geriatric Unit of a hospital.

Jewish anti-Zionists are the bête noir of people like Sackman. The JLM, despite pretending to be a progressive Zionist organisation, has not once expressed any reservations about the genocide in Gaza. Quite the contrary. She made it clear that she was opposed to the issuing by the International Criminal Court of warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant as war criminals. 

On May 24, 2024 she told the Jewish Chronicle that:

she had conveyed Jewish community’s concern over the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant to shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, who said last week he supported ICC process.

Sackman is fully aware that Israel never prosecutes torturers or abusers - instead it prosecuted the Military Advocate General who leaked the video above

Sackman told the JC: 

I trust the Israeli people to hold their leaders to account, and I think they will in due course. I think the request to issue warrants in the middle of a war was unjustified.

Sackman not only demonstrated her Zionist fanaticism but her ability to lie without flinching. Israel has never held members of the IDF to account because of their war crimes or murder of Palestinians. The idea that under the current far-right Israeli government that could happen is testimony to the fact that there is no difference between Labour and Likud Zionism.

When Israeli soldiers were captured on video anally raping a Palestinian prisoner, who was left paralysed, not only did a mob attack the torture camp where they were held, Sdei Teiman, but 65% of Israelis said that the rapists shouldn’t face criminal prosecution.

Instead the Military Advocate General who leaked the video of the rape to the media, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, was arrested. In Israel the whistle blowers are the ones who get punished not the war criminals but this shows more clearly than anything that Sackman is a genocide apologist.

On their website the JLM lists amongst their aims:

To maintain and promote Labour or Socialist Zionism as the movement for self-determination of the Jewish people within the state of Israel.

Amongst their ‘values’ they exist:

To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish Life and its development on the basis of freedom, social justice and equality for all its citizens.

This is based on the World Zionist Organization’s Jerusalem Program, to which the JLM is affiliated, which states that

The foundations of Zionism are the unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation.

One of the cardinal axioms of Zionism is that Jews, wherever they live, are part of one nation. Sarah Sackman is signed up to this nonsense. So the idea that she can make a decision on what is in the British ‘national interest’, whatever that is, when it comes to prosecuting anti-Zionists is patently absurd.

At a hustings in May 2015, the Times of Israel described how 

Sackman was the last person to make a decision as to who to prosecute for their comments on Israel and Gaza. In whose interests was she making the decision? She should not have had any hand in any decisions as to who to prosecute.

Sackman’s comment that the issue of Israel was “something that is deeply personal and emotional,” is precisely why she should not have been anywhere near the decision.

My barrister has therefore submitted an appeal to the Court of Appeal alleging bias. In particular that Sackman’s allegiance to the Israeli state conflicts with her ability to rule on what is in Britain’s interest.

Whereas it is not in Britain’s interest to criminalise supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of genocide as ‘terrorists’ it is very much in the interests of the Israeli state to do so.

And if this was not enough then Sackman, in a joint article with Mike Katz, the former Chair of the JLM, in the Jewish News of March 26, 2016 explicitly attacked me. It beggars belief that she did not disqualify herself from taking a quasi-judicial decision. She wrote, in an article on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party that:

A senior Labour peer has been appointed to investigate the activities of the Oxford Labour Club and other problematic figures such as Tony Greenstein have been suspended. These are welcome first steps and a reflection of how seriously party officials take the issue [of anti-Semitism].

It is clear that her reference to me as ‘problematic’ was a lawyer’s way of saying that I was anti-Semitic. This is what the article, an internal Zionist debate with Jonathan Arkush, the then President of the Board of Deputies, was about.

The fact that Sackman thought it was ok to have anything to do with my prosecution for ‘terrorism’ i.e. freedom of speech on Palestine shows just how corrupt both she and our legal system is and how the fiction that the law officers are separate from the political hurly burly is just that.  A fiction.

Tony Greenstein