The protest group known as the Stansted 15, which includes ambient artist Klaus, will not go to jail.
The activists, who blocked a March 2017 deportation flight at London's Stansted airport, were convicted of "endangering the safety" of the airport in December last year. This morning, Judge Christopher Morgan at Chelmsford Crown Court declined to sentence the Stansted 15 to immediate jail time, the Guardian reports. (The maximum sentence for these airport endangerment charges is life in prison.) Instead, 12 people received community service sentences (Klaus, real name Nicholas Sigsworth, among them), according to End Deportations, a collective whose members include the Stansted 15. The three others received suspended prison sentences due to prior convictions from a Heathrow airport protest in 2015.
The Stansted 15 provided a statement to End Deportations. (Full statement here.)
When a country uses draconian terror legislation against people for peaceful protest, snatches others from their homes in dawn raids, incarcerates them without time limit and forces them onto planes in the middle of the night, due to take them to places where their lives might be at risk, something is very seriously wrong. Every single one of us should be very worried about our democracy and our future.
Last night, Klaus posted a statement in a Twitter thread, also referring to the deportation flight to Jamaica scheduled for today. Manchester-based MC Owen Haisley, AKA Mad Rush MC, was due to be on that flight of people who have committed "serious crimes," according to UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the BBC reports. While Haisley was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK at age 11, he served a jail term for a domestic violence conviction in 2016, which puts his status in jeopardy according to current "hostile" UK immigration policy. Haisley and five others have been "granted a last-minute reprieve," according to the Guardian.
Read Klaus' full thread here.
Update: Klaus has since tweeted about his complicated feelings regarding receiving the sentences on the same day as the Jamaica deportation flight took off. "We have to keep fighting against this," he wrote.
We will update this story as more information emerges.
Photo credit: End Deportations