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PROSECUTORS have halted a Metropolitan Police attempt to criminalise six protesters who attended last year’s Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wrote to the protesters’ lawyers last week, saying that it had discontinued the Met’s action against them as it was not in the public interest, the Observer newspaper reported yesterday.
In a statement, the CPS said: “We have a duty to keep cases under continuous review and we concluded that our legal test for a prosecution was not met.”
One of the protesters, Dania Al-Obeid, who was handcuffed and arrested at the vigil on March 13 2021, described the prosecutors’ intervention as a victory.
“But it doesn’t hold the Met accountable for their actions at the vigil or for their decisions to criminalise me and others for standing up and speaking out over a year later,” she told the newspaper.
The Met’s handling of the vigil, during which officers forcibly dispersed crowds and arrested female mourners, was widely condemned and prompted several probes.
The force claimed that the vigil for Ms Everard, who was abducted, raped and murdered by a serving Met officer, breached coronavirus lockdown regulations.
