My partner’s trial is due to start on Thursday 4th June 2026 at Birmingham Crown Court. They are facing a charge of criminal damage for alleged involvement in direct action that took place at Moog Inc. in Wolverhampton.
Moog is a company that you might associate with synthesisers. That’s Robert Moog. He had a cousin, Bill Moog, who invented flight actuators for aircraft. The company that bears Bill’s name is Moog’s evil twin and has been involved in all sorts of bother. (I wish I was making this up.)
In 2024, they were fined $1.7m for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Indian officials for public tenders. At the same time, they have been shipping essential parts to the Israeli military for use in its F-35 jets, responsible for much of the destruction in Gaza, and the M-346, which trains those same pilots for deployment.
As one local resident pointed out, in an area that built airplanes to fight fascism in World War II, you now have a company arming a fascist nation in 2026. Bezalel Smotrich, at the very least, would be proud of that fact. Still, the UK government has not stopped these shipments.
The UK government claims to have suspended some export licences, but these do not apply to anything Israel actually needs; only the shipping of those items that the IOF could probably buy on Amazon. With regards to Moog’s role in the production of key components for the M-346 — components that no other company produces — Chris Bryant MP misled parliament and contradicted his own briefing when defending the government’s decision not to suspend Moog’s exports.
If any more proof of Moog’s indifference to international law were needed, a criminal investigation has recently been opened into the company’s shipments through Belgium — a country that has implemented a full arms embargo, which Moog appears to have wilfully ignored. But in the UK, it is my partner who is on trial.
My partner and three others have already spent six months on remand in prison, accused of doing what our government has refused to, which is upholding international law and ceasing their facilitation of crimes against humanity. Now the Moog 4 are facing even more time.
Please come to Birmingham Crown Court from June 4th to support the four defendants.