LONDON – A climate protestor who superglued himself to a British Airways aircraft back in 2019 has had his sentence cut to four months from 12 originally.
Back in October 2019, James Brown, an Extinction Rebellion activist superglued himself to a BA Cityflyer jet.
Brown is an ex-Paralympian who then proceeded to live-stream his actions for around an hour before being removed by the authorities.
The judge who sentenced Brown said that he had “cynically used” his disability and put his “own life at risk” to carry out the stunt.
Brown represented himself at the trial arguing that someone had “to do something spectacular” to draw attention to the Climate Crisis.
The Judge said: “The right to peaceful protest should not lead to tolerance of behavior that is far removed from conveying a strongly held conviction but instead seeks to cause chaos and as much harm as possible to members of the public.”
But the jury found him guilty after less than an hour of deliberation.
Three appeal judges have dismissed Brown’s appeal against conviction, of which the aim was to get the prison time down from 12 months to four.
On top of this, he could be placed on bail, with one of the conditions barring him from entering any airport where commercial flights operate for two years.
Brown’s actions at the time affected around 337 passengers who had their flights canceled, resulting in a monetary value of £40,000 worth of disruption.
