Peace activist and PN columnist Maya Evans won a judicial review at the high court on 12 May, overturning a new rule introduced last year ending legal aid for applicants who would not directly benefit from their claims. Maya had already successfully challenged the Ministry of Defence’s policy of handing over detainees in Afghanistan to the local police.
Maya, from the peace group Justice Not Vengeance, said: “The Ministry of Defence has tried to cut off funding for politically…
Late news: On 5 April, long-time peace activist Lindis Percy was found “not guilty” of trespass at the US air force base at Mildenhall, Suffolk, under section 128 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. The case dated back to her hour-long tour of Mildenhall on 30 October 2009, after being permitted to enter by a US guard, Kyler Sherman Brown, who now denies ever seeing Lindis. Crucial CCTV footage has mysteriously gone “missing”. The district judge at Bury St Edmunds magistrates’…
On 14 April, the high court ruled that police acted illegally when they cordoned (“kettled”) Climate Camp protesters in Bishopsgate, London, at the G20 protest on 1 April 2009. The case was brought by two people who were among 5,000 kettled by police for five hours.
The judgment does not rule the tactic of kettling illegal, but places limits on its use, concluding that: “The police may only take such preventive action as a last resort catering for situations about to descend into…
On 29 March, five “Disarm Now Plowshares” peace activists received jail sentences at Tacoma federal courthouse, Washington state, USA. Anne Montgomery, Bill Bichsel, Lynne Greenwald, Steve Kelly and Susan Crane (aged from 60 to 83), were ordered to pay $5,300 each, as well as between six and 15 months in prison, plus a year’s supervised release. The five were arrested inside the US naval base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington state in November 2009. They had cut through fences around the Trident…
In the aftermath of the Mark Kennedy affair, the director of public prosecutions has written to 20 environmental activists recommending that they appeal against criminal convictions as police suppressed potentially crucial evidence from Kennedy, an undercover police officer. The 20 were among 114 activists arrested in April 2009 while planning an action at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station.
It was back in November sometime when I discovered a phone message from someone at Charing Cross police events department asking me to return their call. Reluctant to spend money on a phone call which I didn’t really want to have, I called the number.
I found myself talking to a rather confused police officer who said they wanted to complete information for their files regarding an unauthorised demonstration I had co-organized back in October, and also the use of a megaphone in the…
On 7 March, I was at Newbury Magistrates' Court, Berkshire, putting Trident nuclear weapons on trial. I was charged with “obstruction of the highway'' for a peaceful sitdown protest outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston last July, during the 86-day, 900-mile Footprints for Peace walk from Dublin to London which I completed.
The court heard how I joined three walkers from the US - Liana and Aleta Johannaber from Georgia, and Bernie Meyer (aka “the American Gandhi”)…
The trial of the group known as the Raytheon Nine began in Belfast on 20 May . (Actually, only six of the defendants are in the dock. Three others are currently on remand in the Republic of Ireland on charges relating to dissident republican activity.) The trial began at the Crown Court on 21 May with about 50 people participating in a solidarity demonstration.
The basic facts about the incident at the Raytheon offices in Derry are clear. On 6 August 2006, a group of nine men, part…
19 May sees the opening of a long-delayed trial of nine anti-war protestors charged with criminal damage and affray at a Northern Ireland office of the arms manufacturers Raytheon.
It was on 9 August 2006, as the USA was rushing missiles to Israel to aid its assault on Lebanon, that nine members of the Derry Anti- War Coalition (DAWC) members occupied a Raytheon software development facility and “decommissioned” its computers. Ironically, the software facility had come to Derry/…
On 25 February, the ten East Midlands activists who shut down Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station in early 2007 were found guilty by Nottingham magistrates court, and fined. (See PN2494.)
The defendants had been allowed to enter a “defence of necessity”, arguing that their action was lawful because of the perilous circumstances caused by CO2 emissions.
The judge said that shutting down a power station was “a step too far”, and that “necessity can easily become simply a…
East Midlands climate change activists who managed to shut down Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant for several hours in early 2007 won two significant legal victories in a Nottingham court in January.
In a trial which began at the magistrate's court on 14 January, the 11 activists (some defending themselves) were allowed to put forward an unprecedented legal defence, and to call as a defence witness an earth systems scientist who said the defendants' taking action attempting to make large…
Two graffiti protestors were overwhelmed by a crowd of well-wishers when they arrived for their trial at Edinburgh sheriff court on 9 January. Appalling weather conditions failed to prevent more than a hundred supporters from turning up give their support.
Helen John and Georgia Smith were found guilty of defacing the High Court building in Edinburgh. They used black paint to write “ban cluster bombs” and “£76 billion for genocide” on Remembrance Day 2006.
…
In a ruling that surprised and thrilled defendants and supporters, after a day-long trial on 14 September, a Horseferry Road magistrate dismissed charges against five protesters under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) arising from the 2006 “No More Fallujahs” Parliament Square peace camp (see PN 2480-81).
The charges against Genny Bove, Rob Clohensy, Steve Barnes and Brian Barlow were not supported by the evidence, the magistrate found. David King's charges were…
On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.
Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…
