Five environmental activists are facing long sentences after they were found guilty of conspiring to block traffic on the M25, after a trial in which the defendants were arrested various times for defying the court.
Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for organising direct action protests that caused gridlock on London's orbital motorway in November 2022.
The court heard that each defendant had appeared on a Zoom call to recruit activists to take part in the protests, under the banner of the Just Stop Oil campaign, which involved climbing the gantries over the motorway on which signs hang.
According to the prosecution, over four days the campaign caused disruption leading to a "notional economic loss" of almost £750,000, in addition to a cost of almost £1m to the police.
At times, the two-and-a-half-week trial descended into chaos, with defendants arrested for contempt and dragged by police and custody officers into the dock and down to the cells when they refused to leave the witness box or spoke out of turn, claiming they were not being given the opportunity to present their full case.
Each defendant sought to argue that their alleged actions were justified to raise the alarm over the culpability of government and big business for accelerating climate breakdown.
Each defendant claimed they were not granted a fair trial after the judge ruled that evidence about climate change could play no part in their defence. The defendants were able to get the prosecution to agree to a list of "facts not in dispute" relating to the climate crisis, including that climate change represented an "existential threat to humanity" and that in November 2022 the UK government had opened a new round of licensing for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.