18th September 2025
The New York Times has published MI5’s “open” assessment
The New York Times has published this informative and instructive document.
It appears to be a version of the MI5 Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) assessment of whether Palestine Action commits, participates in and prepares for terrorism.
As it says, the purpose of the document is to:
assess whether Palestine Action is concerned in terrorism, in relation to the statutory tests and discretionary factors for proscription.
It is not, however, the actual assessment. For as the document states:
THIS IS AN OPEN VERSION OF A CLOSED DOCUMENT. THIS IS NOT THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT, AND IS A GISTED VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT WITH SENSITIVE MATERIAL REMOVED OR GISTED.
Presumably the “closed” document is that being relied upon by the United Kingdom government in the current litigation regarding the proscription of Palestine Action, and this is the “open” version which the public (and the claimants) are allowed to see.
This “open”/”closed” distinction is important, as the judicial decisions in the legal case will not necessarily be based on this “open” version. The court may base its decision on material not in the public domain and excised from this “open” document.
That said, the document is still worth looking at carefully, for what it tells us about how terrorism law works in the United Kingdom.
This blog may return to this document in due course.
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