Three Just Stop Oil protesters have been found guilty of aggravated trespass after disrupting Wimbledon tennis matches by throwing confetti and puzzle pieces.
Deborah Wilde, 69, Simon Milner-Edwards, 67 and William Ward, 66, accepted that they climbed over a barrier and threw tinsel and jigsaw puzzle pieces over the court during The Championships, the world’s oldest tennis tournament, City of London Magistrates’ Court heard on Monday.
They had denied that the protest on Court 18 in July last year amounted to aggravated trespass.
The judge said: “Firstly I want to thank all of the defendants for the way they’ve conducted themselves this evening, all of you will have been very stressed.
He said it was “not in dispute” that each defendant “sprinkled some confetti or tinsel and some jigsaw pieces on to that playing field” and said that he “found it a fact” that they were trespassing.
He accepted that the three protesters waited for a break in play, but added: “Nevertheless I find as a fact that each of them intended to cause disruption to the tennis and as a result they did cause some disruption on that day.”
Wilde and Ward were each given a six-month conditional discharge, and Milner-Edwards received an 18-month conditional discharge.
The court had heard earlier on Monday that Wilde and Milner-Edwards entered Court 18 at about 2.10pm on July 5 2023, during a match between Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov and Japan’s Sho Shimabukuro.
Bodycam footage played to the court showed them wearing Just Stop Oil t-shirts.
Giving evidence in the trial, Michelle Dite, operations director at the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), which runs Wimbledon, said Wilde and Milner-Edwards threw “around 1,000” puzzle pieces from a jigsaw that had been bought at the Wimbledon grounds, as well as confetti.
There (was) glitter, flutter-fetti - orange - and jigsaw puzzle pieces that have been spread around different parts of the court, either side of the net
When she arrived the scene looked “very unsettling” and the players appeared “very frustrated, probably quite intimidated”, she said.
She added: “There (was) glitter, flutter-fetti – orange – and jigsaw puzzle pieces that have been spread around different parts of the court, either side of the net.”
Wimbledon staff cleared the jigsaw pieces and confetti by hand and using leaf blowers, she said.
Wilde and Milner-Edwards were arrested at 2.16pm and, about two hours later, Ward, also captured on bodycam footage wearing a Just Stop Oil t-shirt, went on to the same court.
By that time, British player Katie Boulter had started competing against Australia’s Daria Saville.
Miss Dite said Ward’s protest was met with louder “boos” from the crowd, many of whom had witnessed the first incident.
That year AELTC spent “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to manage potential protests after Just Stop Oil demonstrated at the World Snooker Championships and Ashes Test at Lord’s Cricket Ground, she said.
Court 18 is a show court, where many top seeds play in front of “a few hundred” people and there is extensive video coverage, Miss Dite said.