{"id":449963,"date":"2026-02-28T08:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T08:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/449963\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T08:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T08:37:08","slug":"man-charged-over-graffiti-on-sir-winston-churchill-statue-in-parliament-square-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/449963\/","title":{"rendered":"Man charged over graffiti on Sir Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square | UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man has been charged after a statue of Sir Winston Churchill was defaced with graffiti.<\/p>\n<p>Words including &#8220;Zionist war criminal&#8221;, &#8220;Stop the Genocide&#8221; and &#8220;Free Palestine&#8221; were sprayed in red paint on the bronze statue in Parliament Square in Westminster in the early hours of Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Caspar San Giorgio, 38, of no fixed address, was arrested shortly after 4am on Friday, police said.<\/p>\n<p>          <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sdc-article-image__item\" loading=\"lazy\" intrinsicsize=\"768x432\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-parliament-winston-churchill_7176547.jpg\"   alt=\"Pic: PA\" data-testid=\"article-image-image\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        Image:<br \/>\n        Pic: PA<\/p>\n<p>He was taken into custody and charged at 3.50am on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>He was remanded and is due to appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates&#8217; Court later this morning.<\/p>\n<p>San Giorgio was also arrested on suspicion of supporting Palestine Action, which is a proscribed organisation, under the Terrorism Act. the Metropolitan Police said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Dutch group Free the Filton 24 claimed responsibility for the action on Friday morning, posting a video on Instagram appearing to show the incident in progress.<\/p>\n<p>Free the Filton 24 defines itself as a group of &#8220;family and friends&#8221; of the 24 Palestine Action activists who were charged over a break-in at one of Israel-based defence firm Elbit&#8217;s UK sites in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The statue was cordoned off and work to clean it began on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Further graffiti read &#8220;Never again is Now&#8221; and &#8220;Globalise the Intifada&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been charged after a statue of Sir Winston Churchill was defaced with graffiti. Words including&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-449963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}