AN “OUT of control” Home Office should have been the ones in the dock, the Stansted 15 said today after being found guilty of breaching terror laws.

The protesters, who stopped a government deportation flight from taking off at Stansted airport in March 2017, were found guilty of “intentional disruption of services and endangerment at an aerodrome” under the 1990 Aviation & Maritime Security Act after a nine-week trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

All 15 defendants, aged between 27 and 44, rejected the charge brought via the “unprecedented and controversial” use of terror-related law. They could now face up to life in prison.

In a statement, the 15 said the real crime was the government’s “cowardly, inhumane and barely legal” deportation flights and that the Home Office’s “out of control system” must be held to account for the dangers it puts people in.

Defendants Melanie Strickland said the verdict was “profoundly disturbing” for democracy in Britain. “It’s the Home Office’s brutal, secretive and barely legal practice of mass deportation flights that is putting people in danger and their ‘hostile environment’ policy that is hurting vulnerable people from our communities,” she said.

“It’s the Home Office that should have been in the dock, not us.”

Labour’s shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti said: “What a sad International Human Rights day, when non-violent protesters are prosecuted for defending the Refugee Convention and are treated like terrorists.”

She said the party will review the statute book to “better guarantee the right to peaceful dissent” once in government.

A man set to be deported on the flight but since granted the right to remain in Britain said the Stansted 15 “heroes” were trying to stop the real crime from being committed.

He said: “Without their actions I would have missed my daughter’s birth and faced the utter injustice of being deported from this country.

“For me a crime is doing something that is evil, shameful or just wrong and it’s clear that it is the actions of the Home Office tick all of these boxes.”

Representing the defendants, Lawyer Raj Chada said he believes the verdict was “an abuse of power” by the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The 15, mainly from north London, will be sentenced on February 4.