ENVIRONMENTAL groups Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace UK will intervene in appeals challenging sentences given to climate protesters who blocked the M25.

Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were jailed in July.

Mr Hallam, co-founder of Just Stop Oil, was sentenced to five years while the other four protesters received four-year sentences for disrupting traffic by climbing motorway gantries in November 2022.

The appeal will be heard on January 29-30, 2025, alongside cases involving 16 other Just Stop Oil activists.

FoE argues the sentences breach human rights laws and is calling for “proportionate” penalties for protesters.

The group’s senior lawyer, Katie de Kauwe, said the sentences “show the chilling effect of the previous government’s anti-protest laws in stifling our democracy and allowing the government of the day to curb dissent.”

She said: “In what functioning democracy can it be right for those peacefully raising the alarm about the climate crisis to receive longer jail sentences than people who participated in racially motivated violence this summer, and deliberately targeted migrants, refugees and Muslim communities?

“Peaceful protesters shouldn’t be locked up, period.”

Greenpeace UK legal counsel Jack Robirosa said the “draconian” Tory laws have “led to a situation where conscientious people are getting five years in prison for discussing a planned peaceful protest.”

“This is not the sort of thing most people associate with an established democracy with respect for civil rights and a healthy culture of protest and free speech,” he said.

“If these sentences become precedents and the laws that enabled them are allowed to stand, they will make a powerful statement about the kind of country we are becoming, and tarnish our reputation for democracy and free speech.”