Jewish human rights barrister, 94, arrested for supporting Palestine Action

Margaret Owen OBE, a celebrated human rights lawyer and a friend Ed Miliband’s late mother, talks to Al Jazeera.

Margaret Owen, 94, was arrested in Liverpool at a rally outside the Labour Party conference, UK [Courtesy of Amelia Hall]

London, United Kingdom – Margaret Owen, a 94-year-old Jewish human rights barrister, has been trying to get arrested for months.

She has attended about a dozen protests wearing a sign reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” in London and has had a placard with those words attached to a window at her home since the group was proscribed under the Terrorism Act in the UK in July 2025.

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But unlike thousands of others who have been detained for showing support for Palestine Action, officers had not – until Sunday – hauled her into a police van.

“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.”

In her pursuit, Owen had also written to the Metropolitan Police, sharing photos and confessing, but “they’ve never done 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, you know, it’s too much of a story.”

In Liverpool, during a rally held outside the Labour conference , she was finally detained.

“I was the oldest there … Maybe they’d never heard of me, the police up in Liverpool,” said Owen, who in 2013 received an OBE for her contribution to advancing women’s human rights, especially widows’.

Merseyside Police said 82 people were arrested in the same protest “on suspicion of wearing/carrying an article supporting a proscribed organisation” and have since been released on bail.

The Metropolitan Police did not comment on Owen specifically, but told Al Jazeera that, in London, “officers may not have witnessed an offence being committed, or the circumstances may not have met the necessary legal threshold for an arrest at that time”.

Owen said she wanted to be detained because the involvement of legal professionals lends a growing civil disobedience campaign “some sort of authority”.

The rallies have been organised by Defend Our Juries, a UK-based activist group demanding the UK lifts the ban on Palestine Action.

Founded in 2020, Palestine Action’s stated objective has been to counter Israeli war crimes – and what it says is British complicity in them – by targeting weapons manufacturers and associated companies. Its main target is Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, which has several facilities in the UK.

Several people who participated in raids claimed by Palestine Action are in jail, some having been sentenced as “terrorists” .

‘I admire Ed Miliband’

Many of those who have been arrested for showing support are pensioners, overwhelmingly for holding signs with the same seven words as the ones on Owen’s placard.

Doctors, teachers, lawyers, vicars, magistrates (many of them retired), a former adviser to King Charles and a Massive Attack singer are also among the diverse group, as is Tim Crossland, a coleader of Defend Our Juries and former government lawyer.

Campaigners hold signs during a protest outside the venue of the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Britain, September 27, 2026 [Temilade Adelaja/Reuters]

“I believe in the right to peaceful protest,” Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently told LBC radio. “I don’t think it was anyone’s intent to have those people criminalised,” he added, referring to the elderly and Christian leaders who have been detained.

As with the sanctions he announced against illegal Israeli settlements , his comments marked a departure from his predecessors.

Before Labour’s change of guard, few lawmakers under then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticised Israel’s conduct or the ban on Palestine Action. Just 10 voted against it in the House of Commons, compared with 276 for.

Then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper ignored warnings from campaign groups, the United Nations human rights chief and leading politicians and peers that the move misused counterterrorism legislation.

“On the specific issue of Palestine Action, there’s a case coming before the Supreme Court, and so I’ll let that case play out, because I think it’s important that that court process takes its course,” Miliband told LBC.

He was referring to another case expected this year; Palestine Action’s cofounder Huda Ammori has been given permission to challenge the ban at the UK’s highest court.

Miliband, who is Jewish, has credited his late mother’s influence when explaining the UK’s new policies sanctioning Israel as it continues a genocidal campaign in Gaza.

“I admire and love Ed Miliband,” said Owen, who has a personal connection to the foreign secretary. She was “great friends” with Marion Kozak, his mother, a Holocaust survivor whose funeral she attended in July.

Kozak had “always been for the Palestinian people; she recognised the terrible Nakba of 1948”, said Owen, adding Miliband’s mother was moved by the plight “before many of us”.

‘I began to see how authoritarian Israel was’

Owen was born in 1932 to a family that also shouldered a painful history.

Her two great aunts and other relatives were killed in the Holocaust, “murdered in the forests of Paneriai in 1941 outside Vilnius”.

Her father was a lawyer and her mother, a doctor.

They were “very good parents”, she said. “I’m sure my mother would have been protesting like mad as well.”

Having studied law at the University of Cambridge, she qualified as a barrister at a time when the education system and legal profession were “very anti-women”. There were just two women studying law in her year, she said.

She later travelled to Israel for nine months, but after just three, “I began to see how authoritarian it was.”

“I began to see that whole indoctrination .”

She also remembered “how discriminate it was to all sorts of people, particularly the Black Jews, they called them, coming from Northern Africa”.

Along with her brother, who travelled with her, “we were questioning the Balfour Declaration ”.

“[The experience] made me very, very critical of Israel even from 1956 onwards.”

Throughout her career, she has worked on legal cases across the world.

In late December, Owen will learn more about her own case, whether she will be charged over her show of solidarity for Palestine Action.

“I’m afraid I’m not the terrorist,” she said. “But Israel is a terrorist state, and we are complicit in supporting a terrorist state.”

著名人权律师、已故埃德·米利班德的母亲玛格丽特·欧文（OBE勋衔获得者）接受了半岛电视台的采访。

94岁的玛格丽特·欧文在英国利物浦工党大会外的一次集会上被捕。[图片由阿米莉亚·霍尔提供]

英国伦敦——94岁的犹太裔人权律师玛格丽特·欧文几个月来一直试图被逮捕。

她曾多次参加伦敦的抗议活动，举着写有“我反对种族灭绝，我支持巴勒斯坦行动”的标语牌。自该组织于 2025 年 7 月被英国根据《反恐法》取缔以来，她一直在家里的窗户上贴着写有这些话的标语牌。

英国四家慈善机构和抗议团体之一：以色列的禁令威胁“吓不倒我们”

利物浦被捕的四名巴勒斯坦行动抗议者中的第二名

英国外交大臣因巴勒斯坦行动禁令遭到活动人士质问（共4条记录，此为第3条）

英国承诺对以色列在加沙和西岸的行动采取更强硬立场（共4项，此为第4项）

但与成千上万因声援巴勒斯坦行动而被拘留的人不同，直到周日，警方才将她拖进警车。

“我一直想方设法让自己被捕，”她告诉半岛电视台。“我终于加入了‘被捕俱乐部’，我感到非常自豪和高兴。”

在追查过程中，欧文还写信给伦敦警察厅，分享照片并坦白罪行，但“他们从未采取任何行动”。

“我认为他们从来不想逮捕我，因为那对媒体来说会是一个很大的新闻，一个94岁高龄的资深人权律师，你知道，这新闻太大了。”

在利物浦，在工党大会场外举行的一次集会上，她最终被拘留。

“我是那里年纪最大的……也许利物浦的警察都没听说过我，”欧文说道。她于 2013 年因其对推进妇女人权，特别是寡妇人权的贡献而被授予大英帝国勋章 (OBE)。

默西塞德郡警方表示，在同一场抗议活动中，有 82 人因“涉嫌佩戴/携带支持被禁组织的物品”而被捕，目前均已获准保释。

伦敦警察厅没有对欧文的具体情况发表评论，但告诉半岛电视台，在伦敦，“警员可能没有亲眼目睹犯罪行为的发生，或者当时的情况可能不符合逮捕的法律门槛”。

欧文表示，她希望被拘留，因为法律专业人士的介入会给日益壮大的公民不服从运动带来“某种权威”。

这些集会是由总部位于英国的活动组织“捍卫我们的陪审团”组织的，该组织要求英国解除对巴勒斯坦行动组织的禁令。

巴勒斯坦行动组织成立于2020年，其公开目标是通过打击武器制造商及其相关公司，来对抗以色列的战争罪行——以及该组织所称的英国对这些罪行的共谋。该组织的主要目标是以色列最大的武器公司埃尔比特系统公司，该公司在英国设有多个工厂。

巴勒斯坦行动组织声称参与袭击的几名人员已被监禁，其中一些人被判为“恐怖分子”。

“我欣赏埃德·米利班德。”

许多因表示支持而被捕的人都是退休人员，他们绝大多数是因为举着与欧文标语牌上相同的七个字而被捕的。

这个多元化的群体中还包括医生、教师、律师、牧师、地方法官（其中许多人已经退休）、查尔斯国王的前顾问和 Massive Attack 乐队的主唱，以及“捍卫我们的陪审团”的联合领导人、前政府律师蒂姆·克罗斯兰。

2026年9月27日，活动人士在英国利物浦工党年度大会会场外举行抗议活动，举着标语牌。[Temilade Adelaja/路透社]

“我相信和平抗议的权利，”外交大臣埃德·米利班德近日在接受LBC电台采访时表示。“我认为没有人有意将这些人定罪，”他补充道，指的是那些被拘留的老人和基督教领袖。

与他宣布对以色列非法定居点实施制裁一样，他的言论标志着他与前任们的立场有所不同。

在工党换届之前，时任首相基尔·斯塔默领导下的工党议员中，很少有人批评以色列的行为或对巴勒斯坦行动组织的禁令。在下议院，只有10人投了反对票，而赞成票则有276张。

时任内政大臣伊薇特·库珀无视了来自维权团体、联合国人权事务高级专员以及主要政治家和同僚的警告，认为此举滥用了反恐立法。

“关于巴勒斯坦行动组织的具体问题，最高法院正在审理此案，所以我将让该案按部就班地进行，因为我认为让法院的审理程序顺利进行非常重要，”米利班德告诉LBC电台。

他指的是今年预计审理的另一起案件；巴勒斯坦行动组织的联合创始人胡达·阿莫里已获准在英国最高法院对该禁令提出质疑。

身为犹太人的米利班德在解释英国对以色列实施制裁的新政策时，将功劳归于他已故的母亲的影响，因为以色列仍在加沙进行种族灭绝行动。

“我敬佩并喜爱埃德·米利班德，”欧文说道，她与这位外交大臣有着私人交情。她与米利班德的母亲玛丽昂·科扎克是“非常好的朋友”，玛丽昂·科扎克是一位大屠杀幸存者，欧文曾于七月参加了她的葬礼。

欧文说，科扎克“一直支持巴勒斯坦人民；她认识到1948年可怕的灾难”，并补充说，米利班德的母亲“比我们许多人更早”被巴勒斯坦人的困境所感动。

“我开始意识到以色列有多么专制。”

欧文出生于 1932 年，他的家庭也背负着一段痛苦的历史。

她的两位姑婆和其他亲戚在大屠杀中遇难，“1941 年在维尔纽斯郊外的帕内里亚伊森林中被杀害”。

她的父亲是律师，母亲是医生。

她说，他们是“非常好的父母”。“我相信我母亲也会强烈抗议的。”

她在剑桥大学学习法律，并在当时的教育体系和法律界“非常歧视女性”的情况下获得了律师资格。她说，她那一年只有两名女生学习法律。

她后来前往以色列旅行了九个月，但仅仅三个月后，“我就开始意识到那里的专制程度有多高。”

“我开始看清那整个洗脑过程。”

她还记得“当时社会对各种各样的人都存在歧视，尤其是对来自北非的黑人犹太人，他们称他们为黑人犹太人”。

与她同行的哥哥一起，“我们质疑《贝尔福宣言》”。

“（这段经历）让我从 1956 年起就对以色列抱有非常非常批判的态度。”

在她整个职业生涯中，她都参与过世界各地的法律案件。

12 月下旬，欧文将进一步了解自己的案件情况，她是否会因声援巴勒斯坦行动组织而被起诉。

“恐怕我不是恐怖分子，”她说。“但以色列是一个恐怖主义国家，而我们却在支持这样一个恐怖主义国家，我们对此负有责任。”