������Ƶ

LONDON: Half of the protesters arrested in London on Saturday in relation to the banned group Palestine Action are older than 60, police data shows.

Officers arrested 532 people at the mass demonstration against the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last month, The Guardian reported.

All except 10 were arrested under Section 13 of the UK’s Terrorism Act for displaying placards or signs in support of a banned group.

London’s Metropolitan Police on Sunday released an age breakdown of the people arrested at the demonstration. Almost 100 were in their 70s and 15 were aged 80 or older.

The event was organized in Parliament Square by Defend Our Juries, which requested that protesters hold signs saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Police arrested high-profile former government and military figures. Jonathon Porritt, 75, a former adviser to the government of Tony Blair, said he is deeply concerned by the erosion of civil liberties in Britain under successive governments.

Police arrested him under Section 13 and he was bailed until Oct. 23. He described the ban on Palestine Action as “a measure of the government’s desperation” that is “entirely inappropriate.”

Porritt said: “I thought this was overreach by the home secretary, trying to eliminate the voices of those who are deeply concerned about what is happening in Gaza.

“This was an absolutely clear case of a government using its powers to crush dissenting voices when it is the government itself that is most reprehensible for what continues to be an absolute horror story in the world.

“What we are seeing now in Gaza has just utterly shocked people and it’s completely abhorrent that we are living through a genocide on our TV screens.”

Some people who attended the protest complained that police detained older demonstrators for hours in the hot summer weather and denied them access to water.

Defend Our Juries on Sunday said everyone arrested had been released from police custody and no charges had been issued.

The Met Police said: “There was water available at the prisoner processing points and access to toilets. We had police medics on hand as part of the policing operation and we processed people as quickly as possible to ensure nobody was waiting an unreasonably long time.

“Notwithstanding that, a degree of personal responsibility is required on the part of those who chose to come and break the law.

“They knew they were very likely to be arrested which is a decision that will inevitably have consequences.”

Chris Romberg, a 75-year-old former British Army officer colonel and a military attache at the British embassies in Jordan and Egypt, was also arrested under Section 13 and bailed.

“This is a serious assault on our freedoms,” Romberg, the son of a Holocaust survivor told, The Guardian. “When I protested against the US war in Vietnam, we were able to chant ‘victory to the NLF’ without being criminalized.

“Now a statement of support for a nonviolent direct-action group is prosecuted under anti-terrorism legislation.”

Award-winning poet Alice Oswald, 58, told officers who had detained her to write to the home secretary about the position they were forced into as a result of the Palestine Action ban.

She said: “Clearly there were some police officers who were really struggling with what they had to do. You could see the slightly shifty look in their faces, too.

“When I was speaking to them in the police van I did say: ‘Write to Yvette Cooper and tell her that this is making your life impossible’.”

She told The Guardian that she was partly motivated to attend the demonstration after delivering online poetry classes to young people in Gaza.

Since the proscription of Palestine Action in July, 10 people have been charged for suspected offenses under the Terrorism Act.