A Brighton woman has been found guilty of stealing part of a memorial to hostages kidnapped by Hamas and throwing it in a seafront bin.
Fiona Monro, 58, also wrote “Pray for the 30,000 murdered Palestinians” on the Palmeira Square memorial the following week – but was acquitted by a jury today of criminal damage in relation to that.
Monro, of Belgrave Place, told the court she did not think the memorial should have been put up in the Hove square, describing it as political propaganda.
She said she did not know at the time that a poster she took down was of a hostage, Tsachi Idan, whose cousin, Adam Ma’anit lives in Hove.
It has since emerged that Idan, whose teenage daughter Maayan was shot by a Hamas gunman, was killed while in captivity.
After she put the board with his poster on and placed it in the bin, it was retrieved by Mr Ma’anit and his wife Heidi Bachram and put back in the square.
On Thursday, the trial heard from Magdalena de Laurans, who watched Monro take the board on 5 February, 2024, four months after Hamas had taken the hostages.
On Friday, witness Stephen Fixman told the jury he saw her taking a poster off the board and writing on it with marker pen on 12 February, a week later.
The court was told that Monro was invited to a voluntary interview in April, at which she gave police a prepared statement saying she was concerned Zionists had exaggerated evidence because of her husband Tony Greenstein, who she described as a Jewish activist outspoken against Zionism.
Giving evidence on Friday, Monro said de Laurans had “entrapped” her by not objecting to her removing the board.
She also denied Mr Fixman’s claims that he had told her about Mr Idan’s local connections, and she had told him she didn’t care.
She said: “The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening.
“A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.
“I gather that there have been 50 occasions when it was removed. One can argue that the people of Brighton and Hove are angry about this so-called memorial being there.
“It certainly did not represent the Jewish community. I’m married to a Jewish man, it certainly didn’t represent our feelings.
“I didn’t know there was a Brighton connection with this particular person.
“What did this have to do with Brighton? Should we all start putting up boards in public gardens?”
During the trial, Judge Stephen Mooney was asked by Monro’s defence counsel Hamish McCallum to allow the jury to consider whether it was proportionate to convict Monro on the basis she was exercising her right to express her political views.
But Judge Mooney said he would not direct the jury to take this into consideration. He said: “This is not therefore a case of the state seeking to prosecute the defendant disproportionately for expressing her own views or otherwise interfering with her rights.
“It is a case of the state prosecuting the defendant for putting her views above those of others and causing them wholly unnecessary distress by so doing.”
The jury unanimously found her guilty of theft, but not guilty of criminal damage.
Judge Mooney gave her an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered her to pay £1,200 prosecution costs.
Sussex Police have previously issued two appeals over other cases of the memorial being targeted.
In October 2024, a man was filmed tearing down tributes, teddies and flowers at the memorial. A now 79-year-old man was identified and arrested, and was made the subject of a conditional caution at the time.
In June last year, an image of a man was released in connection with criminal damage. A man in his 50s was arrested but subsquently eliminated from enquiries and no further suspect has been identified.
