94-year-old human rights barrister arrested at Palestine Action protest outside Labour conference
Margaret Owen, 94, a Jewish human rights barrister awarded the OBE, was finally arrested in Liverpool after months of trying, as Merseyside Police detained 82 people at a Defend Our Juries protest supporting the proscribed group.
A 94-year-old Jewish human rights barrister who had spent months trying to be arrested has finally been detained by police, at a protest outside the Labour Party conference in Liverpool supporting the banned direct-action group Palestine Action.
Margaret Owen was arrested on Sunday during a silent sit-in organised by Defend Our Juries, which has been campaigning against the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation in July 2025.
“I’ve been trying to get arrested for quite some time,” she told Al Jazeera. “I’m rather proud and glad to have finally joined the club.” She said she had attended about a dozen protests wearing a sign reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, kept a placard with those words in her home window, and even wrote to the Metropolitan Police with photos confessing — but officers “never did anything about it”.
“I think they never wanted to arrest me because that would be quite a story for the media, this ancient veteran human rights lawyer, aged 94,” she added.
Merseyside Police said 82 people were arrested on suspicion of wearing or carrying an article supporting a proscribed organisation and have since been released on bail, with another 79 reported for summons. The Met told Al Jazeera that officers in London may not have witnessed an offence or the circumstances did not meet the legal threshold for arrest.
Owen received an OBE in 2013 for her work advancing women’s human rights, particularly widows’. Amnesty International UK called the arrests “a shameful attack on freedom of speech”.
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