A co-founder of the pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action has asked a London court to pause a British government decision to ban it under anti-terrorism laws, a move her lawyers said was an “authoritarian abuse” of the law.

Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, asked London’s High Court to stop the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, before a full hearing of her case that banning Palestine Action is unlawful later this month.

“This is the first time in our history that a direct action, civil disobedience group which does not advocate for violence has been sought to be proscribed as terrorists,” Ammori’s lawyer, Raza Husain, told the court.

Husain described the government’s decision as “an ill-considered, discriminatory, authoritarian abuse of statutory power that is alien to the basic tradition of the common law”.

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