Just Stop Oil Co-founder Hits out at Judge Who Jailed Him For 5 Years

Just Stop Oil co-founder Roger Hallam hits out at judge who jailed him for five years over plots to block the M25 motorway in scathing letter from behind bars

An eco-activist jailed for five years for paralysing the M25 has hit out at the judge who put him behind bars, in a letter written from prison.

Hallam, 58, and his co-defendants were given record jail terms by Judge Christopher Hehir, who told them: 'Each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.'

The activist also co-founded protest groups Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.

Just Stop Oil founder Roger Hallam

Police officers attempt to stop an activist putting a 'Just Stop Oil' banner on a motorway gantry

45 people climbed up the gantries, which led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1 million

Police watch as traffic is held back as a lunatic from Just Stop Oil occupies a gantry over the M25 near Godstone in Surrey

Eco Cult Leader Hallam

German Eco Lunatic Frieda Luerken, the partner of Just Stop Oil activist Roger Hallam, outside Westminster Magistrates' Court, London

Frieda Luerken, his German lover and enviro-muse, helped him 'organise the coming revolution' in a London love nest. Insulate Britain was their first 'lockdown lovechild'.

Eco Cult Leader Roger Hallam (left) met German Eco-Fanatic Frieda Luerken (right) when she was a student at Cardiff University, where she graffitied its buildings

The judge's sentencing comments were published on the front pages of several national newspapers, including the Mail.

The judge said the eco-activists' stunt, which disrupted London's M25 motorway for four days in 2022, had caused disruption and harm to others 'simply so that you may parade your views'.

He said Hallam was 'the ideas man' and gave him a five-year jail term, and sentenced each of his four co-defendants to four years.

Two of them - Cressida Gethin, 22, and Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35 - issued a joint statement from prison condemning the 'injustice of what has been done to us'.

From left to right: Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw and Roger Hallam.  Hallam was sentenced to five years' imprisonment while the remaining four defendants were each handed four years' imprisonment

The five were found guilty of conspiring to cause a public nuisance after the court heard they had agreed to cause disruption to traffic by having protesters climb onto gantries over the M25 on four successive days in November 2022.

Prosecutors said the protests, which involved 45 activists, caused a staggering 50,000 hours of delays affecting more than 700,000 motorists and left the M25 'compromised' for more than 120 hours. The economic impact was said to be at least £765,000.

The court heard the delays meant mourners had missed funerals, travellers missed flights and students missed exams, and a police officer suffered concussion and bruising after being knocked off his motorbike.

Roger Hallam (right) with Mike Lynch-White (left), Dr Larch Maxey (2nd right) and Valerie Brown (2nd left)

Hallam was previously found guilty of a plot to close Heathrow Airport by using drones

Roger Hallam, pictured being arrested at Heathrow in 2019. He was found guilty of a plot to close down the airport by using drones. He received a two-year suspended sentence

Hallam was previously found guilty of a plot to close Heathrow Airport by using drones. He received a two-year suspended sentence in 2019.

The same year, he attracted controversy when he told a German journalist the Holocaust was 'just another f***ery in human history', saying genocides happened repeatedly in the last 500 years, adding: 'You might say it is like a regular event.'

In an interview with the weekly Die Zeit, in which he referred to the Holocaust several times, Hallam said: 'The fact of the matter is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history.'

The Eco Lunatic was quickly condemned by Extinction Rebellion groups in Germany, as well as the German government after his comments to the newspaper.

Germany's foreign minister, Heiko Maas, tweeted: 'The Holocaust is more than millions of dead and horrific torture methods. To want to murder and exterminate Jewish women and men is uniquely inhumane. We must always be aware of that so we can be certain: never again!'

The German branch of Extinction Rebellion expelled him.

They said said: 'We explicitly distant ourselves from Roger Hallam's belittling and relativising statements about the Holocaust. In so doing he contravenes the principles of XR, which does not tolerate antisemitism, and he is no longer welcome in XR Germany.'

Other incendiary remarks include stating his desire to 'bring down all the regimes in the world', starting with Britain, and his belief that those running society 'should have a bullet through their heads'.

He has said that protesters should be ready to cause disruption through personal 'sacrifice', and If necessary, they 'should be willing to die'.

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Two Just Stop Oil fanatics who were convicted for throwing tins of Heinz tomato soup over Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery