Three climate activists on Monday pleaded not guilty to criminal damage after two paintings by Vincent Van Gogh were doused with soup at London’s National Gallery. Stephen Simpson, 71, Mary Somerville, 77, and Phillipa Green, 24, -- members of the Just Stop Oil group—were arrested at the gallery immediately after Friday’s incident, and appeared at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

The paintings were targeted just hours after two other members of the same group were jailed over a similar incident in October 2022. The gallery said “a soup-like substance” was thrown over “Sunflowers” (1888) and “Sunflowers” (1889) and that three people had been arrested.

Prosecutor James Bowker said the frames of the paintings had been damaged and would “likely require lengthy restoration”. He told the court that the defendants entered the Van Gogh exhibition at the museum on Friday afternoon, threw soup on the paintings and then took off their coats to reveal T-shirts reading “Just Stop Oil”.

Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were convicted in July of criminal damage after pouring tomato soup over the screen protecting the still life masterpiece “Sunflowers” (1888). Plummer was on Friday jailed for two years and Holland for 20 months. Both had pleaded not guilty. The attacks are the latest in a series of protests by the group—seeking an end to the extraction and burning of oil, coal and gas—that have prompted an increasingly hard line by the authorities.— AFP