London, December 12 (RHC)-- In Britain, 15 activists who blocked a charter plane from deporting nationals of Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone in March 2017 have been convicted of terrorism and could face life sentences.

Members of the group End Deportations chained themselves to an aircraft, preventing it from taking off from the Stansted Airport near London.  The activists became known as the “Stansted 15.” 

In an anonymous op-ed published in The Guardian, one of the people who was nearly deported by the charter flight wrote of the news: “There’s no doubt in my mind that these 15 brave people are heroes, not criminals. … Without their actions I would have missed my daughter’s birth, and faced the utter injustice of being deported from this country without having my (now successful) appeal heard.”