Hassaan Ahmed حسان احمد

One of my most popular articles ever included a long extract from a powerful closing speech by barrister Rajiv Menon during a Palestine Action trial in January. In the end, the jury refused to convict the six defendants. Menon is now on trial for that closing speech – for reminding the jury that they had a 350-year-old right in law to follow their conscience in reaching a verdict, even if it meant defying a direction from the judge to convict. Paradoxically, Menon joked in his speech that, because of that earlier legal principle, the judge, unlike his counterpart in 1670, could not lock them, the jurors, up were they to choose to follow their consciences. Instead, the judge is seeking to lock up the barrister. Does 2026 qualify as an improvement on 1670? It is believed that this is the first time a barrister has been tried for comments made to a jury in his closing speech. That should serve as a potent reminder of just us how authoritarian the current political moment is, and of how quickly long-established legal rights are being dismantled to protect British collusion in genocide. Read my article – and the part of the speech for which Menon is being tried – here: jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-…