JUSTICE SERVED
Just Stop Oil mastermind Roger Hallam jailed for 5 years after causing chaos on M25 at cost of £1.1m to taxpayers
The Sun exposed group's plans to police after going undercover on a Zoom call with the eco-idiots
JUST Stop Oil mastermind Roger Hallam and four others have received a total of 21 years behind bars after The Sun exposed their plot to block motorways.
Hallam, 58, Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, bought the motorway to a standstill with their antics.
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The Sun exposed the group's plans to police after going undercover on a Zoom call to discuss the plot.
The group caused more than 50,000 hours of vehicle delay - affecting more than 700,000 vehicles - and left the M25 "compromised" for more than 120 hours.
They were jailed for a total of 21 years today after the November 2022 carnage cost British taxpayers £1.1million.
The eco-idiots shouted out "I love you" as they were led from the dock.
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Judge Christopher Hehir said: "The plain fact is that each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic."
Around 45 people scaled gantries on the motorway, Southwark Crown Court was told.
One police officer suffered concussion and bruising after being knocked off his motorbike in traffic caused by one of the protests.
Judge Hehir said the group's Zoom call showed "how intricately planned the disruption was and the sophistication involved".
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He also praised it as "compelling evidence" of the existence of a conspiracy.
All five defendants were convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Ringleader Hallam was jailed for five years, while the remaining four protesters were each handed four years' imprisonment, thanks to The Sun.
The sentences today dwarf those given to Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker for scaling the Dartford Crossing.
They received three years and two years and seven months respectively for the October 2022 demonstration.
The convictions come after The Sun infiltrated a JSO meeting and passed on recordings to police of the hardline green campaigners’ plot to scale motorway gantries.
All five had spoken on a Zoom call trying to recruit potential volunteers for the M25 protests in 2022.
On the call, Extinction Rebellion co-founder Hallam said they intended to cause “the biggest disruption in British modern history”.
Sentencing the five JSO protesters, Judge Christopher Hehir thanked The Sun, saying: “I know that none of you think much of the Sun newspaper. However she and her newspaper did entirely the right thing by passing [the recording] on to the police.
“The plain fact is that at some point you have crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.
"Your fanaticism has made you heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens."
After our tip-off police sprang into action and curtailed the scale of the protest while National Highways secured an emergency High Court injunction to prevent the disruption.
The Gold Command of the operation at the time thanked The Sun for their evidence.
The Judge told Southwark Crown Court that Hallam was “at the very top of the tree as far as the conspiracy is concerned”.
Judge Hehir added: “The protests caused massive disruption.
“Every section of the orbital motorway was affected.
“The cost incurred by the Metropolitan Police alone was over £1m.
“People missed flights, people missed funerals.
“The offences committed by all five of you indeed, and as I have made clear lengthy custodial sentences must follow.”
Supporters of the defendants expressed outrage at the sentences, which came after a in which Judge Hehir ruled that the jury should not take into account evidence about climate breakdown.
The defendants wanted to point to this as the key motivation behind their actions.
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Remanding the defendants to prison last week after their guilty verdicts, Judge Hehir told them: “You are going to prison for a very long time.”
They will all serve half their sentence in custody.
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