Trials & legal cases

A bigger court had to be made available to accommodate everyone when, on 17 May, supporters came to Harrogate Magistrates' Court to hear District Judge Roy Anderson sentence Lindis Percy following her five convictions - given on 14 April - for protest

As Peace News went to press, a High Court hearing into the injunctions demanded by Brighton arms manufacturers to restrict anti-war protests was still continuing. Richard Purssell reports... The injunction is being sought by EDO/MBM Technologies Ltd, subsidiary of the giant US arms manufacturer EDO Corp, under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
It seeks to create an exclusion zone, which would restrict all protest activities around the claimant's factory to two-and-a-half hours…

After a week of presiding over the trial of the Pit Stop Ploughshares in Dublin's Four Courts, Judge Frank O'Donnell dismissed the jury after admitting that that his actions could be perceived to be biased. He ordered a retrial for October.

On 3 February 2003, the Pit Stop Ploughshares Five disarmed a US Navy C40 plane in a hangar at Shannon Airport, County Clare, Ireland (see PN2458).

Two years later, on Monday 7 March, they finally went to trial. One hundred and fifty…

Regular Mole-istas will know that this column finds it hard to resist an opportunity to criticise once-Red Ken, Mayor of Greater London. And we all know very well, from recent evidence, that Ken “turn-again” Livingstone similarly finds it impossible (especially when in party mood) to resist slagging off the Daily Mail. Which leaves The Mole, also a hater of the Daily Wail, in an ambiguous position.

The Mail's wilful pandering to (and generation of) the ill-informed…

A lengthy legal struggle by two campaigners has been vindicated with a final victory in the the European Court of Human Rights: on 15 February the ECHR ruled that the McLibel 2 - Helen Steel and Dave Morris - had been denied freedom of expression and a fair trial when they were sued for libel by the multinational junk food giant McDonald's.

In other words, officialdom has caught up with what the rest of the world knew more than 10 years ago.

McDonald'…

When the invasion of Iraq was being planned, the US government needed bases to refuel and load planes full of troops en route to its bases in Qatar and Kuwait. They picked Shannon Airport in County Clare, Ireland. And, despite its much-vaunted neutrality, the Irish government was more than willing to help.

According to recent calculations, approximately 50,000 soldiers have passed through Shannon Airport on their way to fight the war in Iraq, never mind the weapons, which reportedly…

Five peace activists Margaret Jones, Paul Milling, Phil Pritchard, Toby Olditch, and Josh Richards, have been given leave to appeal to the House of Lords with regards to their various attempts at attempt to disarming USAF equipment at Fairford during early 2003.

Toby and Phil said their action was motivated by the inability of international pressure to prevent the prosecution of an illegal and unjustified war. Olditch and Pritchard entered Fairford with the intention to disabling the…

On 22 March 2003, three coaches set off from London to protest against the bombing of Iraq by US B52s which were flying missions from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Police stopped, searched, turned away, and detained the London coaches before they reached the demonstration. The police actions have consequently become the subject of an ongoing legal case which had a ruling at the Court of Appeal on the 8 of December 2004. The recent ruling was unsatisfactory to the protesters even though…

US anti-sanctions activists have had a long-threatened civil action brought against them by the US Treasury Department.

At the end of June, campaign group Voices in the Wilderness (US) were sent a summons for “judicial enforcement of a civil penalty of $20,000 assessed by the United States Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for violations of the Iraqi Sanction Regulations”. The summons gave the group 20 days to respond, otherwise a default judgement…

Over the past seven years, Voices in the Wilderness has been a nonviolent campaign to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq. Our focus has never been on political interests or the balance of power in international politics. Our concern has always been for the needs and interests of ordinary Iraqis, many of whom we have come to know.

From our presence in Iraq, we have seen no evidence that the lives of ordinary Iraqis are considered in US policy decisions. When…

The five chapters of this book were originally part of a longer book, And justice for all, published in1963 (the other five chapters can be found at http://www.oceanbooks.com.au ). The author, William Kunstler, who died in 1995, was a radical US defence lawyer whose clients included Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

The reissue is in response to the current attack on civil liberties in the US in the wake of 11 September 2001, and…

For three days in May in a US courtroom, 26 citizens attempted to break through government deceit to speak the truth: that the US Army School of the Americas – renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (WHISC) – is the sinister source of horrendous violence.

It is a place where Latin American soldiers are trained in the murderous techniques of counterinsurgency. Graduates of the school have participated time and again in documented torture, massacre, and…