Just Stop Oil protesters appeal record-breaking sentences for M25 disruption

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Five Just Stop Oil protesters jailed over a plot to block the M25 motorway are appealing their record-breaking sentences.

Roger Hallam, co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years imprisonment for his role in a “sophisticated” plan to disrupt traffic on the M25.

Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin, who were also involved in the plan, were sentenced to four years. The sentences are thought to be the longest sentences ever given in the UK for non-violent protest.

Their plan to disrupt the M25 was partially successful and caused delays for road users calculated to total 50,856 hours and an economic cost of £769,966, according to judge Christopher Hehir’s sentencing remarks.

The jury heard that those affected included a patient suffering an aggressive form of cancer who missed their appointment and had to wait a further two months, and a child with special needs on the way to school who missed his medication.

The long sentences were met with condemnation from environmental campaigners such as Chris Packham, who said they constituted a “direct theft of our freedom”.

UN special rapporteur Michel Frost said the sentence was neither reasonable nor proportional and did not serve a “legitimate public purpose”.

Actors, musicians and faith leaders, such as former archibishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, have appealed to the attorney general for an urgent meeting to discuss the jailing of the climate activists.

Lawyers on behalf of the activists, who have been dubbed ‘the Whole Truth Five’, will argue on appeal that the sentences were massively excessive.

A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil said: “The Whole Truth Five, along with others, did the best thing they could, according to the evidence, to prevent catastrophic and irreversible harm to the public and life on earth. Judge Hehir’s imagined ‘deterrent effect’ is both cynical and naive.”