The producer will be sentenced in February 2019.
Nicholas Sigsworth – AKA 1-800 Dinosaur producer Klaus – is among the 15 members of the campaign group End Deportations found guilty of a terrorism-related offence today (December 10).
The group blocked the takeoff of an immigration removal charter flight during a non-violent protest at Stansted airport in 2017, a terrorism-related offence for which they could receive life sentences, The Guardian reports.
“We’re reeling”, Klaus said on Twitter, “but whatever they do to us, it will ever be as bad as the suffering the home office inflict on people every single day.”
they found us guilty. we’ll get sentenced 4th february. we’re reeling.. but whatever they do to us, it will never be as bad as the suffering the home office inflict on people every single day. we will keep fighting in solidarity with those people.
— klaus (@klausmuzik) December 10, 2018
There were people due to be forced onto that plane and sent to places where they knew no-one and feared for their lives. 11 people due to be on it are still in the country now, having their cases heard properly. 1 person now has leave to remain. This is why we did it.
— klaus (@klausmuzik) December 5, 2018
The activist group used lock-on devices to attach themselves to a plane chartered by the Home Office to remove undocumented immigrants to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. Chelmsford crown court found the defendants guilty of intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome under the 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act.
Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, described the charge as like “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”, while Gracie Bradley, policy and campaigns manager at Liberty, called it a “grave injustice” and a “malicious attack” on the group’s right to peaceful protest.
