LONDON, Sept 22, (AP): Four Greenpeace activists arrested for scaling the country estate of former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and draping it in black fabric to protest his plan to expand oil and gas drilling in the North Sea have been cleared of criminal charges.  Judge Adrian Lower in York Magistrates’ Court threw out the charges Friday after finding the evidence was too "tenuous” to convict them of criminal damage for allegedly cracking tiles on Sunak's slate roof in North Yorkshire.

"Justice and common sense prevailed in court today, but that hasn’t been the case for many activists recently," one of the defendants, Michael Grant, said outside court. "We have become a country that regularly sends peaceful protesters to jail, with some facing years behind bars for trying to preserve a habitable planet for us all. This has to stop."

While other environmental protesters, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, have also prevailed in UK courts, many others have been convicted and some have received stiff prison sentences. Five activists who planned a protest to block traffic on a major highway circling London that caused major gridlock over several days in November 2022 were sentenced in July to as much as five years in prison.

The trial against Grant, 64, Amy Rugg-Easey, 33, Alexandra Wilson, 32, Mathieu Soete, 38, was halted in July after defense lawyer Owen Greenhall argued that prosecutors failed to prove that 15 slate tiles were damaged by the protesters during a five-hour protest in August 2023. The four cloaked the house in long black sheets while two fellow protesters stood on the lawn below holding a banner with the words "Rishi Sunak - Oil Profits or Our Future?” Sunak and his family were on vacation in California at the time.