[NYTr] UK: Ayr Sheriff Acquits Seven Prestwick Airport Protesters

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by marcus (activ-l) - Aug 13, 2007

Trident Ploughshares

Press release: 10th August 2007

Ayr Sheriff Acquits Seven Prestwick Protesters

War crime was an issue, claims expert witness

Following the acquittal of seven of the eight Prestwick protesters at
Ayr Sheriff Court due to inadequacies in the Crown case, a prominent
expert witness testified that collusion in war crime was relevant to
the context of the trial.

Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University told
the court that war crime by Israel was very much an issue at the time
of the incident at the airport. Israel had been breaching
international law by targeting its air strikes in Lebanon at areas
and installations liable to contain civilians. They had asked the US
for an emergency top-up supply of bombs. US planes delivering these
armaments would need a fuel stop-over in the UK and Prestwick was one
of the options.

The accused activists carried out inspections of Prestwick Airport on
the night of the 6th/7th August last year to look for evidence of US
munitions bound for Israel for use in the Lebanon conflict. Facing
trial were Matt Bury (50) from Somerset, Sarah Lasenby (68) from
Oxford, Jean Oliver (48) and Douglas Shaw (56), both from Biggar,
Olivia Agate (65) from Helensburgh, Marcus Armstrong (46) from Milton
Keynes, Chris Bluemel (25) from Southampton, and Angie Zelter (55)
from Cromer.

All eight accused were facing a charge of trespass, or in the case of
Olivia, a charge of aiding and abetting a trespass. At the end of the
prosecution case, a defence submission that there was no case to
answer on that charge was accepted by Sheriff Montgomery. This left
Angie, Marcus and Chris facing the other charge, that of being on an
aircraft without permission. The Crown had already accepted that in
the case of Angie there was lack of identification and the Sheriff
decided this was also true for Chris. He was however persuaded by the
prosecution argument that given the circumstances it could be
inferred that Marcus did not have the required permission.

Marcus' trial has been adjourned until Monday.

Angie said: " I am delighted that when Paul Rogers gave his evidence
the real issue got the attention of the court at long last. Since
there was good reason to suspect that Prestwick was colluding in war
crime we had every justification for doing what we did. The big worry
is that it was left to ordinary citizens like us to act when there
were whole layers which should have taken responsibility, from the
Scottish Executive, through the police, down to the airport
authorities and the civilian contractors. All the way down it was the
same sorry story. Not my problem, nothing to do with me, I am just
doing my job. Our whole society needs to be educated in the Nuremberg
Principles and their insistence on the duty of everyone to recognise
their responsibility and act to uphold international law."

More on the case is available at
http://www.tridentploughshares.org/article1497

Photos updated today will be available this evening at
http://tinyurl.com/ytbh46 (once you view an individual photo you can
see it at the original resolution by clicking where it says "Full
size" above the photo)

http://www.tridentploughshares.org