On 17 October, three anti-fracking protesters were released after spending three weeks in Preston prison. Roscoe Blevins, 26, and Richard Roberts, 36, had been sentenced to 16 months in prison; Richard Loizou, 31, had been given 15 months inside.
The court of appeal replaced the prison sentences with two-year conditional discharges (no punishment unless you commit another offence within two years, in which case you will be sentenced for both crimes).
Lord chief justice lord Ian Burnett of the appeal court described the sentences as ‘manifestly excessive’ for the crime of sitting on top of trucks delivering equipment to a Cuadrilla fracking site in Lancashire.
Four men had stayed on the trucks for four days in July 2017. The fourth man, Julian Brock, 47, was given a suspended sentence partly because he pleaded guilty, unlike the others.
Topics: Green, Climate change & climate action