The Weekly Round Up: Animal Rising Protestors Acquitted in the Supreme Court and the ICC’s First Libya Case Goes to Trial
20 July 2026
In the News
In Westminster: Parliament rises for summer recess, Immigration and Asylum Bill latest, and FAC inquiry into UK-Russian long-term relationship launched
The House of Commons adjourned on Thursday for the summer recess and will not sit again until Tuesday 1st September. It rose with the Immigration and Asylum Bill, debated at second reading the previous Monday, fresh in its wake, and with the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ (‘JCHR’) legislative scrutiny of the Bill under way.
The JCHR has invited written submissions on the Bill’s compatibility with domestic and international human rights obligations until 1st September, so the recess will be no quiet interlude for those preparing evidence.
On Wednesday, the Chair of the JCHR, Lord Alton of Liverpool, welcomed the Bill’s strengthened safeguards against forced labour in UK supply chains. The Committee’s July 2025 report on the same had warned that the UK risked becoming a ‘dumping ground’ for goods made using forced labour, and called for mandatory human rights due diligence and improved access to justice for victims in the UK courts. That report is to be debated in the House of Lords on Friday 4th September. Lord Alton’s welcome of these safeguards is notable for its selectivity: the Committee’s scrutiny of the Bill’s more contested provisions, not least the proposed restriction of Article 8 claims in immigration appeals, continues.
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Elsewhere in Westminster, the Foreign Affairs Committee (‘FAC’) launched an inquiry into Russia, which will consider the UK’s bilateral relationship and ask whether the UK’s long-term strategic approach to a post-conflict Russia is clearly defined.
A challenging week for the International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) has had a week of striking contrasts. As the week opened, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced a campaign to ‘dismantle’ the Court, contending that it had strayed beyond its mandate in pursuing American personnel. The United Nations responded the same day by defending the Court’s critical role in the global fight against impunity and, on Wednesday, a resolution urging the United States to join the Court was introduced in the House of Representatives.
The diplomatic pressure formed the backdrop to the Court’s Security Council briefing on Darfur (on which, see below).
The ICC’s difficulties are not only external. On Tuesday, the Bar Standards Board confirmed that the ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, has been suspended from practice as a barrister pending the outcome of disciplinary proceedings arising from allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies. Mr Khan was separately suspended by the ICC’s governing body in June.
In the Courts
R v McCafferty and others: the Supreme Court narrows statutory public nuisance
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in R v McCafferty and others [2026] UKSC 20, unanimously allowing the appeals of six Animal Rising (then Animal Rebellion) protestors, with the result that they stand acquitted. Lord Leggatt gave the main judgment, with which Lord Reed, Lady Simler and Lord Doherty agreed; Lord Sales concurred in the result.
On the morning of 8th September 2022, the six defendants obstructed the entrance to a dairy works owned by Müller UK, chaining themselves to temporary fencing and gluing themselves to the surface of Pointon Way — a private road providing the only access to the site — so that for some four hours no vehicle could enter or leave. They were charged under the second limb of the statutory offence of public nuisance (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, s.78): an act which obstructs the public, or a section of the public ‘in the exercise or enjoyment of a right that may be exercised or enjoyed by the public at large.’
The trial judge found no case to answer, on the basis that the defendants had obstructed a private road leading to private premises. The Court of Appeal reversed that ruling, and certified a question of general public importance: whether those who go to private business premises — as employees, customers or suppliers — are a section of the public exercising such a right when they approach, enter or leave.
The Supreme Court’s answer was no. A ‘right’ within s.78(1)(b)(ii) means a genuine public right — the paradigm being the right of passage along the highway — and is to be distinguished from a mere licence or permission granted by a landowner, which confers no right at all. There was no evidence that the public at large had been granted permission to use Pointon Way, let alone a right to do so. Lord Leggatt invoked the principle that a criminal penalty — particularly one carrying a potential loss of liberty — should not be imposed on a doubtful construction of a statute.
The Crown’s fallback argument, that the protestors had at least obstructed the right of those inside to leave the premises, fared no better: a trespasser does not cease to be a trespasser upon making for the exit. Nor could the prosecution salvage matters by pointing to offences it had never charged: no application had been made to amend the indictment to allege the first-limb offence or aggravated trespass, and there was accordingly no basis for disturbing the judge’s ruling.
The judgment substantially narrows the reach of the second limb of s.78 as applied to protest at private premises, and channels such conduct towards the offences Parliament actually designed for it. Coming a month after the Court of Appeal upheld the proscription of Palestine Action, it is a reminder that the law of protest continues to develop in both directions at once: the courts will uphold broad executive and legislative measures where lawfully made, but will not stretch penal statutes beyond their terms to catch disruptive protest.
S.T. v. the Czech Republic: a death in police custody and the duty to investigate
On Thursday, the Strasbourg Court gave judgment in S.T. v the Czech Republic, finding several violations of the Convention arising from the death of the applicant’s brother, a Roma man, following a police intervention in 2021, and from the ensuing investigation. The Registry’s summary is stark: the use of the prone position by police was followed by the man’s death, and the authorities failed both to protect his life and to investigate effectively the use of force and its potential discriminatory motives (see the Court’s press release).
The case arises from the death of Stanislav Tomáš in Teplice in June 2021, after an officer knelt on him in the course of his restraint: an incident captured in footage and circulated widely which drew comparisons, at the time, with the death of George Floyd. The domestic authorities had concluded that there was no causal link between the police intervention and the death. Strasbourg’s insistence that allegations of racially discriminatory motives in policing must themselves be effectively investigated continues a line of authority of obvious relevance on this side of the Channel, where the disproportionate use of force against minority communities remains under scrutiny.
Bazhenov and Others v. Russia and Ukraine: property rights in occupied Crimea
Also on Thursday, the Court delivered its Chamber judgment in Bazhenov and Others v. Russia and Ukraine (nos. 20092/18 and 11 others), finding several violations of the Convention (see, also, the Court’s press release).
Between 2015 and 2017, the Russian authorities cancelled the applicants’ titles to plots of land in Sevastopol, Crimea, which had originally been transferred into private ownership by the Ukrainian authorities. The plots were reclaimed as public property on the footing that they were forest lands which ought never to have been privatised.
The Court held that there was no legal basis for the Russian authorities to deprive the applicants of their ownership. The applications were directed against both Russia and Ukraine, though the findings summarised by the Registry concern the acts of the Russian authorities.
The judgment adds to the growing body of Strasbourg case law on the consequences of the occupation of Crimea for private rights, following the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Ukraine v. Russia (re Crimea), and is a further instance of the Court adjudicating upon the acts of an occupying administration against Convention standards notwithstanding Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe.
In The Hague: The ICC’s first Libya case goes to trial, Darfur update, and Rome Statute anniversary
On Wednesday, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC rejected the defence challenge to the Court’s jurisdiction in The Prosecutor v. Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri, holding unanimously that the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the case.
The majority reasoned that the alleged conduct remains covered by the Security Council’s referral of the situation in Libya under Resolution 1970 (2011), notwithstanding Libya’s more recent acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction by declaration under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute.
The following day, the Chamber unanimously confirmed all charges against Mr El Hishri and committed him to trial. The Chamber found substantial grounds to believe that Mr El Hishri — alleged to have been one of the most senior officials at Mitiga Prison in Tripoli — is responsible for seventeen counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against thousands of detainees between May 2014 and June 2020, comprising torture, cruel treatment, imprisonment, outrages upon personal dignity and other inhuman acts; rape, attempted rape and other forms of sexual violence; murder and attempted murder; enslavement; and persecution.
Mr El Hishri was arrested in Germany on 16 July 2025 and surrendered to the Court in December 2025, with the confirmation hearing held in May of this year.
This is the first case in the ICC’s Libya situation to be sent to trial in fifteen years of investigation; Human Rights Watch described the decision as a ‘milestone for justice’ in Libya.
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Meanwhile, regarding the situation in Darfur, the Office of the Prosecutor announced on Tuesday that it seeks to withdraw the charges against Abdallah Banda — a request originally filed confidentially in October 2023 and made public only this week — drawing the curtain on one of the Court’s longest-dormant cases. The charges against Mr Banda, arising from an attack on African Union peacekeepers in 2007, were confirmed in 2011, and he has been at large under a warrant of arrest since 2014.
On Wednesday, the Deputy Prosecutor, Nazha Shameem Khan, briefed the UN Security Council on the situation in Darfur pursuant to Resolution 1593 (2005), against the backdrop of continuing atrocities in the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces — and of the week’s diplomatic assault on the Court itself.
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The week closed with the President of the ICC, Judge Tomoko Akane, marking the Day of International Criminal Justice on Friday: the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998, an occasion which this year found the Court as productive as it is embattled.
