the prosecution of six protesters for attending a vigil for Sarah Everard has stopped.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) informed protesters’ lawyers that the prosecution was “discontinued” last week, The Observer reported.
In a statement to the PA news agency, the CPS said the “legal test” for prosecution had not been passed.
A CPS spokesperson said: “We have a duty to continuously review cases and we have concluded that our legal test for a prosecution has not been met.”
The vigil took place on Clapham Common on March 13 last year.
The event was originally organized by Reclaim These Streets, but was canceled after the Met said it should not go ahead and that the Supreme Court has not given a definitive answer to the matter.
However, people showed up all day and the officers did not intervene for the first six hours, while many came to lay flowers, with the Duchess of Cambridge also paying her respects.
By the evening, hundreds of people had gathered and refused to leave at the request of the police, leading to clashes in which protesters were bundled up on the ground and arrested.
The six protesters had been accused of breaking lockdown rules by attending the vigil.
One of them, Dania Al-Obeid, described the CPS’s decision to end her case as a “victory.”
“This is a victory in itself, but it doesn’t hold the Met accountable for their actions during the vigil or for their decisions to criminalize me and others for standing up and speaking out more than a year later,” she told The Observer.
She is now taking legal action against the Met for overseeing the vigil and behavior towards her.
Commenting on the decision, Louisa Rolfe, assistant police commissioner at Met, said police know how important it is for people to “express their anger.”
“We know how important it was for people to remember Sarah Everard and express their anger,” she said in a statement.
“Officials took their duty very seriously to protect the public during the pandemic and balance this with the rights of individuals.”
The force added that a decision to pursue a prosecution is “entirely a matter for the CPS”.
Mrs. Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by the then serving police officer Wayne Couzens on March 4 last year.
Couzens, 49, was sentenced to life in prison for the crime, the first time the sentence had been handed down for a single murder of an adult not committed during a terror attack.