US designates Palestine Action a ‘terrorist group’
Trump administration puts UK group under sanctions just over a year after it was proscribed in Britain
The US government has labelled Palestine Action a terrorist organisation and imposed sanctions on the British direct-action group, just over a year after the UK banned it in a highly contentious move.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Palestine Action had “materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism”, labelling it one of a number of “violent far-left terrorist groups”.
Wednesday’s move follows the UK government’s decision, upheld in June, to proscribe the organisation, whose high-profile supporters include Irish author Sally Rooney and Sir Jonathon Porritt, a former environmental adviser to King Charles. It also comes amid a White House crackdown on leftwing groups both domestically and internationally.
Ofac’s sanctions mean that any US assets held by the group will be frozen, while all transactions with it by people in the US are prohibited. In addition, the US could impose secondary sanctions on banks that deal with the group.
Scott Bessent, Treasury secretary, said the sanctions were a warning to “far-left extremists, their fronts and their enablers”.
“Political terrorism has no place in our society, and we will continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated,” he added.
Other entities already sanctioned by Ofac include the Palestinian militant group Hamas, al-Qaeda and Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to overturn the UK’s “draconian and disproportionate” proscription.
“The fact that [Donald] Trump is now taking inspiration from Britain’s repression of the movement for Palestinian freedom exposes just how dangerous this ban is and should be a wake-up call to anyone who cares about free speech and civil liberties,” she said.
Palestine Action’s proscription in the UK has been highly contentious, with priests, teachers and pensioners among thousands of people arrested at large-scale demonstrations for holding signs in support of the group.
The ban — approved by British MPs in July 2025 after two planes were damaged at RAF Brize Norton, the UK’s largest air base — was initially ruled unlawful.
But the Court of Appeal overturned that High Court decision in June this year, with judges describing Palestine Action as a “covert organisation” whose “whole premise . . . is to cause damage to property” belonging to companies operating lawfully in the UK.
In July, the Supreme Court said it had given Ammori permission to appeal against the group’s ban, and hearings are due to be held in early November.
The US Treasury said Palestine Action had been responsible for “multiple high-profile instances of breaking into defence infrastructure”. The group’s use of social media to promote its actions was “encouraging the use of similar tactics internationally”, including in the US and on the country’s border with Mexico, it added.
Tommy Pigott, spokesperson for the US state department, said the move was “part of a broader US government effort to address the threat of transnational far-left terrorism”.
The Trump administration sanctioned two other groups alongside the British organisation: Italy’s Autistici Inventati and the international Masar Badil.
Defend Our Juries, a pressure group that has organised the large-scale demonstrations in Britain, said: “We warned of the assault on our democracy and freedoms when the UK government proscribed Palestine Action.
“Whilst bowing down to the arms industry and Israel lobby, the UK government has encouraged Trump to escalate his domestic crackdown on civil liberties.”