A PROTESTER has been found guilty of a terrorism offence.

Lyndsay Burtonshaw, 28, from Brighton, was one of fifteen campaigners who cut through Stansted Airport’s perimeter fence and locked themselves together around a chartered deportation plane.

They were found guilty of an aviation security offence after a nine-week trial.

Burtonshaw is a research associate at the University of Sussex.

The role means she is not a paid member of staff, but can access resources like the library for research.

Prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC told Chelmsford Crown Court that the group “placed the safety of the airport in a likelihood of danger” through their actions.

The Boeing 767 jet targeted by the group was chartered by the Home Office to transport people from UK detention centres for repatriation to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone and the offence took place on March 28 2017.

The fifteen protesters used industrial bolt cutters, chains, expanding foam, scaffolding poles and locks to prevent the take-off of a plane.

The CPS said the group had placed themselves, the flight crew, airport personnel and police at “serious risk of injury or even death”.

In a statement issued by campaign group End Deportations, the so-called Stansted 15 said: “We are guilty of nothing more than intervening to prevent harm.

“The real crime is the government’s cowardly, inhumane and barely legal deportation flights and the unprecedented use of terror law to crack down on peaceful protest.

The group were found guilty under the 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act, a law passed in response to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

They will be sentenced on February 4 at Chelmsford Crown Court.