Heathrow: Nine Just Stop Oil activists arrested at airport

Nine Just Stop Oil activists have been arrested at Heathrow Airport but operations are continuing as usual, police have said.

They were detained near the airport and taken into custody on suspicion of conspiring to interfere with a site of key national infrastructure under the Public Order Act.

The group said “the international uprising begins” and claimed supporters of climate activist organisation Last Generation were behind delays at Cologne-Bonn Airport.

The German airport confirmed that “unauthorised people” gained access to its security area earlier.

Footage of Heathrow shared on the Just Stop Oil (JSO) account on X, formerly Twitter, appears to show people cycling near a high barbed wire-topped fence close to passenger planes before dismounting and being approached by officers.

A JSO spokesman said: “We refuse to die for fossil fuels. Continued burning of oil, gas and coal, as we pass irreversible tipping points that threaten to spin our climate out of control in a rapidly accelerating way, is jeopardising the stability on which our entire society depends.”

A spokesman for Heathrow Airport said: “There has been absolutely no impact on operations whatsoever” and that “no-one gained entry to anywhere they shouldn’t be.

“Thanks to swift action from the police and airport colleagues, there is no disruption to passenger journeys.

“Heathrow continues to operate as normal today.”

Earlier this month, the High Court granted an injunction prohibiting anyone from entering, occupying or remaining on London Heathrow Airport land in connection with environmental campaigns, without consent.

Anyone breaching the injunction might be jailed, fined or have their assets seized for contempt of court.

The action follows the imposition of long jail sentences on five members of JSO who disrupted the M25 in 2022.

The sentences – of four and five years – were described in an open letter signed by hundreds of high-profile names – as “one of the greatest injustices in a British court in modern history”.