© Susan Riddell / Instagram Susan Riddell: I'm no longer facing terrorism charges
Comic now accused only of lesser offences
Susan Riddell is no longer facing terrorism charges, she has revealed.
The comic shared the news on social media and says she is contemplating taking legal action over her experience.
However, she still faces less serious charges – although the case has yet to be indicted to court
Riddell was one of three women arrested in July last year after a van was driven into the fence of a defence factory in Edinburgh during pro-Palestinian protests.
The Glaswegian was unable to perform her 2025 Fringe show, How Do You Sleep At Night?, because her bail conditions prevented her travelling to the Scottish capital. However, she did perform a Zoom gig remotely during the festival.
When she first appeared in Edinburgh Sheriff Court, she entered no plea to a charge of malicious mischief, aggravated by having a terrorist connection. She was also charged with an offence under the Road Traffic Act 1988, similarly aggravated.
In a video posted on Instagram earlier this month, but not previously reported elswhere, the comic said: ‘Good news. I’ve just been to my lawyers there and my terrorism charge has been dropped. Yay!
‘Fuck’s sake. They’ve decided we’re no terrorists, after a year of [virtual] house arrest. So now we’re just facing some other, less serious charges … there’s still a trial, so let’s hope the jury are sound. But aye, no longer Susanna bin Laden according to the British Crown.’
Speaking on the most recent episode of Material Girl, the podcast she co-hosts with comic Amanda Dwyer, Riddell added that she was ‘looking into suing’.
Chortle has reached out to Riddell to ascertain the updated details of her trial.
Fellow comics posting congratulations on her Instagram included Jen Brister, Ashley Storrie, Lauren Pattison, Sam Lake, Alasdair Beckett-King, Liam Withnail, Paul Black, Kim Blythe, Eleanor Morton and Chris Forbes.
Fern Brady wrote ‘YESSSSSSSSSS but I will miss calling you Terrorist Susan’, while Elaine Malcolmson said: ‘Yes!!!! Just nipped to Card Factory and they seem to be out of Congratulations On Not Being A Terrorist cards. But congrats all the same xxx’. Dwyer joked ’Where can I protest this?’
The incident took place at the offices of Italian firm Leonardo, which had been the subject of protests for providing weapons to Israel. The company said it did not directly supply Israel and that its main customer was the UK Ministry of Defence.
Riddell, who has been performing material about the issues of dating whilst facing terrorism charges, has been restricted to afternoon gigs because of a curfew as part of her bail conditions. But she has continued fundraising for families in Gaza and been dogsitting to make ends meet.
On an episode of comedian Zara Gladman’s Spiralling podcast, released this month but recorded in July, she disclosed that she and her co-accused were initially held for a week in solitary confinement in Scotland’s most secure police holding facilities, the Terrorist Detention Centre in Govan, Glasgow, ‘which I really enjoyed.
‘The warden or the screw or whatever you want to call them, you’re allowed reading material when you go to prison … it’s a human right. So I asked for a book and he gave me [Stephen King’s] The Shining…
‘I don’t know to this day if he was trying to be a smartarse or he was just a dumb fuck … or if it was like psychological warfare. But it was actually quite good, the book, very different from the film. They don’t say "Here’s Johnny!"’
She also explained that she was subsequently placed on curfew and only allowed out of her Glasgow home between the hours of 7am and 7pm, which meant she got into a ’dead boring Covid-y routine, it’s like a new lockdown but just for you’.
On being banned from Edinburgh, she said ‘it was pretty funny. All the comedians were like: "Are you doing this to get out of the Fringe?"
‘People think comedians enjoy the Fringe. Like, your normal punter doesn’t realise everybody hates doing the Fringe and it’s pure torture. So everybody’s like: "Oh, nice move there. See what you’ve done there".
‘Yeah, I’d rather be in solitary confinement reading The Shining ...’
She also revealed that being confined to her home at night had given her ‘dread’ of performing.
‘I was doing an afternoon gig [at The Stand in Glasgow] and I went blank on stage’ she recalled. ’And that would always happen to me anyway and I wouldn’t care because I’d just be like right, well, I can just fuck about for a wee bit just now and talk to the audience.
‘But honestly, I pure panicked. I was like, I want to run off this stage. And have they noticed that I can’t remember what I’m going to say?’
None of the other comedians, listening as they waited in the green room, noticed her ’blanking’. But the sound technician had. ‘The muscle memory was away’ she recalled.
Riddell also said it was ’weird’ revealing her situation in gigs. ‘There’ll be some people that know what has happened in the audience and some people that don’t. So you have to ask: "Who knows that I’ve been charged with terrorism?"’
Introducing the issue with slides, ‘didn’t work at a normal night or I didn’t have the time to make it work at a normal night because I hadn’t been gigging all the time as well, so I wasn’t confident in it either … All my old, dating material type of stuff … it feels surreal. I’m like, why am I talking about this?
’Like, I’ve done it a million times. It’s still funny, I can still make it work. But then there will be some people there that know I’ve been charged for terrorism and they’ll be like, "why is she not mentioning it?"
‘It’s just hard. My gig [the Material Girl live show] was a safe room because I knew that everybody was in support … But saying that, people’s fucking arseholes tighten up when you even mention Gaza. Even if they are like Pro-Palestine, do you know what I mean?’
When Gladman asked her if she could see herself becoming a ‘full-on political comedian’, Riddell mused: ’Obviously, I need to talk about it. But I almost don’t want to exploit it either. I don’t want to [think] I’m getting booked for that because that’s weird as well.
‘It feels if I was to like go hammer and tongs and just like, that’s all I spoke about, it would feel a bit grifty if I’m making money from it.
‘Should there be a 45-minute mark where I’m like … but it’s no my trauma. Obviously, I can joke about all the stuff that happened to me but I’m not going to try and write jokes about people and a fucking genocide.’
- by Jay Richardson
Published: 30 Sep 2026
