British police are set to be granted greater powers to clamp down on repeated protests, the UK Home Office announced Sunday, after hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists were arrested in central London for supporting the banned activist group Palestine Action.
Nearly 500 people were arrested Saturday in Trafalgar Square in central London for demonstrating in support of the group, according to London’s Metropolitan Police.
The Home Office announcement comes after police and lawmakers asked organizers to call off Saturday’s “Lift the Ban” protest, which came just days after the Manchester synagogue attack where two people were killed on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day.
Protest organizers Defend Our Juries rejected those calls, saying “canceling peaceful protests lets terror win.”
Jewish activists were among the 493 people arrested Saturday, including Elizabeth Morley, a 79-year-old daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was arrested for the third time, and a 79-year-old Jewish man with a terminal illness, organizers said.
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