POLICE have charged a further 47 people for showing support for Palestine Action, bringing the total facing prosecution over protests in London to 114.

The Metropolitan Police said today that the latest group had all been arrested at a demonstration in the capital on July 19 and charged by post.

They are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in October, accused of breaching anti-terrorism legislation by showing support for a banned organisation.

Palestine Action had urged supporters to take part in mass protests to overwhelm the justice system and make it impossible to prosecute every demonstrator.

The direct action group was proscribed earlier this year after it claimed responsibility for damaging aircraft at RAF Brize Norton in response to their use to facilitate Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori is taking legal action against the Home Office over the ban, with the case due to be heard in November.

Detective Chief Superintendent Helen Flanagan of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command said officers were moving “quickly and efficiently” to investigate arrests linked to the group.

Meanwhile, former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf has urged the nation’s top prosecutor to take a “principled” stand by making clear that demonstrators “peacefully” showing support for Palestine Action would not be pursued in the courts.

In a letter to Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC, he cited concerns raised by United Nations high commissioner for human rights Volker Turk, Amnesty International and the Scottish Human Rights Commission over the British government’s stance.

Mr Yousaf urged Ms Bain to provide “certainty” to the public and to ensure that Scotland’s human-rights obligations are met.

Mr Yousaf, a former Scottish justice secretary, argued that it was “not in the public interest to prosecute non-violent individuals whose conduct consists solely of expressing support for Palestine Action, for example [by] wearing a T-shirt, carrying a placard or making a peaceful statement.”

He said restrictions on speech and assembly “must be lawful, necessary and proportionate” and pointed to an earlier decision not to pursue prosecutions at Glasgow’s safer drug consumption facility as a precedent.

“I believe a similarly framed prosecution statement making it clear that there would be no public interest in prosecuting those have peacefully supported Palestine Action would be appropriate here,” the former SNP leader said.

“Criminalising a placard or statement that neither incites nor assists violence fails that test and risks misusing counterterror powers against people of conscience.”