Just Stop Oil protesters including XR co-founder have sentences REDUCED in major appeal

Six Just Stop Oil (JSO) protestors who were handed jail terms for taking part in climate demonstrations – including Extinction Rebellion’s Roger Hallam – have had their sentences reduced.

Last year, 16 activists were sentenced for their involvement in four demonstrations led by JSO between August and November 2022.

Demonstrators ended up climbing on gantries above the M25 and notoriously threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers.

Delivering the judgement this morning, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, alongside Justice Lavender and Justice Griffiths, ruled that six of the 16 should have reduced sentences, while she dismissed the rest of the appeals.

At a hearing in January, the protestors’ lawyers argued that all 16 sentences were “manifestly excessive”.

Hallam had previously been jailed for five years for agreeing to disrupt traffic by allowing protesters to climb onto gantries above the M25 for four days had his sentence reduced to four years.

Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin originally received four-year prison sentences for their involvement in the same demonstration.

While Shaw’s and Lancaster’s sentences were reduced to three years, Whittaker De Abreu and Gethin’s sentences were reduced to 30 months.

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The court threw dismissed ten other appeals, including those of George Simonson, Theresa Higginson, Paul Bell and Paul Sousek.

The four were imprisoned for between two years and 20 months for their involvement in protests along the M25 and were those responsible for climbing onto gantries over the busy national motorway.

Larch Maxey, Chris Bennett, Samuel Johnson and Joe Howlett were originally handed jail sentences of between three years and 15 months after they occupied tunnels under the road which led to the Navigator Oil Terminal in Thurrock, Essex.

Their appeals were dismissed.