Activists in court to appeal conviction for harassment of Welsh MP
Both women denying harassing justice minister Alex Davies-Jones
Two pro-Palestinian activists found guilty of harassing a Government minister have appeared in court to appeal against their convictions.
Ayeshah Behit, 31, and Hiba Ahmed, 26, were found guilty of the charge against Alex Davies-Jones, the Labour MP for Pontypridd, at Cardiff Magistrates' Court in June.
Both women are challenging the ruling, denying they harassed Ms Davies-Jones, a justice minister, at an appeal hearing before Merthyr Crown Court on Friday.
The pair had filmed a confrontation with Ms Davies-Jones, who had been campaigning in the village of Treforest, Rhondda Cynon Taf, in the lead-up to the general election, on June 26 last year.
As she made her way to the campaign meeting place, she saw Behit and Ahmed with leaflets which suggested she was a "full-blown supporter of this genocide" - referring to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Later, Behit and Ahmed put posters on the Labour office in Pontypridd - the base of Ms Davies-Jones' campaign for the general election - that referred to politicians "enabling genocide".
They also placed stickers reading "Alex Davies-Jones how many murdered children is too many?" on the office, and a poster reading "Alex Davies-Jones supports genocide" on a bus stop - while a video of the confrontation was uploaded onto social media.
Ahmed, a final year architecture student at Cardiff University with no previous convictions, was handed a 12-month conditional discharge in June.
Behit, who had a previous conviction relating to a protest in Cardiff last year, received an 18-month conditional discharge.
Ms Davies-Jones told the court on Friday she was aware of what was on the leaflets and had initially approached the defendants to try to defuse the situation.
She said the defendants quizzed her on her voting record, with them asking why she had abstained on a ceasefire vote in the Commons.
Ms Davies-Jones told them she had not abstained and instead had been out of the country at the time.
The MP ended the conversation with the pair, telling the court it was clear that they were not going to be satisfied with her answers, describing the situation as "quite confrontational".
"They started to follow us down the street, shouting quite awful things at us," she said.
"'Why do you support genocide Alex Davies-Jones' was repeated a number of times, 'why are you happy for babies to be murdered'."
She described feeling "scared, intimidated, threatened", and she and her team hid in a university building to get away from them.
The two women later saw the MP and her team while door knocking on the campaign trail.
Ms Davies-Jones said they were following her down the street, knocking on doors that canvassers had previously visited and could be heard loudly telling residents that she supported genocide.
Ms Davies-Jones said they decided to stop the session, conscious of what had happened to other MPs, including the murder of Jo Cox, with her team having become "fearful".
An edited video of her interaction with the pair was later posted on social media, with suggestions that she is Islamophobic.
"The consequences of that (video) were severe and still are," she said.
"There has been relentless targeting with abuse, harassment, threats.
"I have had to increase security at my home, office, when I'm out in public.
"It's constant - it's changed everything, it's changed the entire way in which I work."
Behit insisted they had only been there that day to hand out leaflets, and were not "at all" aware Ms Davies-Jones was due to be there.
She said: "I wanted people who were planning to vote, who had the Palestinian cause in mind, to know what their local candidate stood for and believed in."
Behit did not deny shouting after the MP, but insisted they had not continued following Ms Davies-Jones and her team.
She also denied having knocked on doors after the canvassers, insisting they had only put leaflets through letterboxes and talked to people in the street.
However, she admitted to placing leaflets under the windscreen wipers of a vehicle owned by a canvasser, as well as posters and stickers on a bus stop and on Ms Davies-Jones' office.
She dismissed the argument from Nik Strobl, appearing for the prosecution, that they had been deliberately targeting Ms Davies-Jones.
"It was an insane coincidence," she said.
"That is why we were shocked we bumped into her, it was a shocking coincidence because we were handing out leaflets with her name on and then she happened to walk up to us."
Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke, the Record of Cardiff, adjourned the appeal until next Friday, when Ahmed will give evidence.