SEVEN protesters who have been charged with damaging Donald Trump’s Scottish golf course face being sentenced as terrorists, according to reports.
It comes despite the fact that none of them have been charged with any terror offences.
The protest by Palestine Action activists took place on March 8 2025, before the group was proscribed as a terror organisation by the UK Government, and was taken in response to the US administration’s plan “to ethnically cleanse Gaza”.
The protesters sprayed red paint on the clubhouse at the 800-acre resort, and damage was also caused to the greens, with the words “Gaza is not for sale” painted.
The indictment – seen by The New York Times and The Guardian – has reportedly revealed that the prosecution will seek to establish a "terror connection", to enable terror sentences to be imposed on the defendants.
The first hearing in the case will take place on August 31 in the High Court in Glasgow.
The news comes in the same week that Trump’s administration announced its own ban on Palestine Action as a global "terror" group.
Questions have also been raised about pressure Trump may have placed on former prime minister Keir Starmer to proscribe Palestine Action after the protest.
Trump said at the time on Truth Social: “I was just informed by Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom, that they caught the terrorists who attacked the beautiful Turnberry, in Scotland. They did serious damage, and will hopefully be treated harshly. The three people who did this are in prison. You cannot let things like this attack happen, and I greatly appreciate the work of Prime Minister Starmer, and UK Law Enforcement."
It was also revealed during the judicial review proceedings in the High Court that Trump had two phone calls with Starmer after the Turnberry action.
In June, four Palestine Action protesters who were convicted of criminal damage under ordinary criminal law, after a protest at an Israeli arms firm's premises in England, were sentenced as terrorists.
Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori has been granted permission to challenge the ban on the group in the UK in the Supreme Court, which will be heard in November 2026.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said: “It’s now all too clear why the White House has designated Palestine Action as a global terror organisation, alongside Al Qaeda. It’s because members of Palestine Action upset the President in March 2025 by making a mess of his golf course.
“This is the terrifying reality of the ‘leader of the free world’. While he wreaks havoc on the global population, backing genocide and launching deranged wars of choice, issuing threats to China, Canada and Greenland, sanctioning the judges of the International Criminal Court, and turning the military on his own population, his primary concerns are his ballroom, his interns and his golf course.
“This presents the rest of the world with a stark choice. What’s more important? Obedience to the mad emperor or standing up for democracy and the rule of law?”
Ammori added: “This lays bare what the ban on Palestine Action has always been about. We used direct action protests to save lives – the opposite of terrorism – by disrupting the flow of arms being used to murder Palestinians. By hitting the profits of arms companies and by daring to spray paint on the golf course owned by the demagogue who has enabled Netanyahu’s crimes, we made powerful enemies. The British Government chose to appease them by criminalising us as ‘terrorists’.
“It has already been revealed that Trump and Keir Starmer discussed Palestine Action twice on calls before Starmer’s Government announced that we would be proscribed under terrorism legislation. Trump has been characteristically open about this, posting on Truth Social at the time to label the spray-painting of his golf course ‘terrorism’ and saying he greatly appreciated Keir Starmer’s swift and robust response.
“As someone of Palestinian and Iraqi heritage, there is rank hypocrisy in the country that has helped destroy both my homelands working with the British Government to criminalise me and the organisation I co-founded as ‘terrorists’. The news that the defendants could face terror sentencing — and that Trump is now following Britain’s lead by banning Palestine Action in the US — should be the final nail in the coffin of this ban, which has become one of the most extreme attacks on free speech and the right to protest in modern British history."
