Update 6 - Final

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CONTENTS

1) "Bread Not Bombs Retrial" ends in guilty verdict and sentence of time served for Stellan & Annika. Prosecution to decide what to do with Ann-Britt's case.
2) Loch Goil Ploughshares Acquitted

1) Final Day
Our procession to the court was followed by a Quaker reflection from River and statements from both Annika and Stellan. We concluded the circle with a ploughshares song in Swedish by Annika, Anna and Frida.Yuko set herself up for her daily 7 hour prayer vigil and drumming, we taped our banners to the barriers on the roadside and passing motorists began "honking for peace".

The prosecutor closed comparing the defendants action to having your sweets taken off you by the schoolyard bully at primary school (hard to know how much childhood trama this unleashed in the jury'S psyche!).

Annika's barrister then closed, he finished with the quote from the Preston monument "good people of Preston remember the good people have suffered to gain your rights", he described Annika as a good person that only the jury had the power to turn her into a criminal and concluded with the Martin Luther King quote "for evil to triumph all is required is that good people do nothing" appealed to the jury do something, find them not guilty.

Stellan also closed refering to the news that was just breaking that the Loch Goil Ploughshares had been acquiited, the Scottish judge having found Britain's Tridents to be illegal. He suggested that the Liverpool jury of '96 must be feeling vindicated after the recent exposure that the Britishgovernment was then lying about the use of Hawks by the Indonesian Air Force over East Timor and the recent exposure of that genocidal regime.

The jury went out, came back with a question "that if the action could be seen as symbolic would it still be criminal damage", Stellan said the action was both symbolic and actual, the Judge said it still would be criminal damage. The jury came back in the afternoon to say it couldn't reach a unanimous decison. They returned later with a 10-2 guilty verdict. The judge sentenced Annika and Stellanto time served and left it to the prosecution to take initiative on Ann-Britt's case.

Many thanx for all the solidarity and support - prayerful, hospitality, financial etc. - from "Bread Not Bombs Ploghshares".

Check out the website http://www.plowshares.se/english

Ciaron can be contacted for the next 4 weeks on 07930-961842

2) Loch Goil Ploughshares Acquitted: Report from The Scotsman, 22/10/99

Determined protest aims to sink nuclear deterrent

by KATRINA TWEEDIE

ON A still summer night, three mothers silently clambered aboard a rented dinghy sitting in the shallows of Loch Goil. Their short trip across thewater would inevitably end in arrest.

Yesterday, however, after four months and an astonishing trial, their actions were apparently threatening the future of Britain's £11 billion nucleardeterrent.

On that Tuesday night in June, the women, nervous despite months of planning, launched the boat and headed for a floating defence laboratory, Maytime, moored near the centre of the loch in Argyll. At one point, Ellen Moxley, 63, from Stirlingshire, Angie Zelter, 41, from Norfolk, and Ulla Roder, 42, from Denmark, clasped hands as the engine spluttered and water started leaking into the dinghy. They made it to the barge, but expected to be caught within minutes of landing on the installation, which they suspected was used for vital sonar testing. Armed only with screwdrivers and hammers, the trio, now known simply as the "Trident Three", boarded the barge and, after unbolting a loose window, Ms Zelter squeezed through. In more than three hours, the women caused £80,000 worth of damage, after cutting wires, smashing equipment that was nailed down and throwing anything that was not, including computers and files, overboard. Only after hanging up several banners and arranging their already prepared police statements, videos and propaganda on a table, did they feel their "housework" was finished.

They settled down for a picnic of sandwiches and grapes. Finally, as the women, tired of waiting, prepared to escape by borrowing one of the safer Ministry of Defence boats moored to the barge, the police arrived. [They tried not to 'escape' but to see if the second barge, the 'Newt' was worth disarming ... a difference in interpreation]

The women were remanded to Cornton Vale prison, Stirlingshire, facing charges involving malicious damage and theft. All three could have been freed on bail, but refused to accept conditions banning them from attempting further action against Trident submarines.

By wrecking Maytime, the women believed they were preventing HMS Vengeance, the newest submarine, from developing vital acoustic "invisibility" and therefore hoped to disable one of Britain's four Trident nuclear submarines, first launched to replace the Polaris fleet in 1994.

The appearance in court of three middle-class women belied their position at the centre of one of Britain's largest and most determined anti-nuclear campaigns.

Most members of Trident Ploughshares 2000 are prepared to risk a prison sentence - others say they will risk death - in pursuing what they see as a simple duty to "prevent the mass murder of innocent people by nuclear weapons". They have agreed to take whatever non-violent action is necessary.

Breaking laws, which they insist are themselves illegal, means little to the activists. The group is named after the Old Testament text which refers to the golden future in which weapons of war will be turned into tools. Members have stepped up their campaign which was originally aimed at banishing British nuclear weapons - all now based in Scotland - by 2000.

Despite dozens of protests, 350 arrests and members spending more than 550 days in jail since Trident Ploughshares was founded in May 1998, it has taken the actions of the Loch Goil trio to grab the attention of the public, prosecutors, and politicians. The TP2000 campaign is said to have attracted not only full-time agitators and eco-warriors, but middle-class activists including grandmothers, teachers and priests.

When the group meets for one of its regular planning sessions, the most striking impression is the cacophony of foreign accents as they decide their next phase in their campaign. Mirroring the make- up of the wider peace movement, themajority of members are female. Women are able to make the connection between the Trident and the loss of human life quicker, they say.

Ms Moxley, a retired zoologist, is American-born but has lived in Scotland for more than half her life. She has been a Quaker since 1976 and her introduction to the worldwide peace movement began when she joined demonstrations against the Vietnam war. A single-minded woman, who has adopted a Vietnamese orphan, she said her time in jail on remand was a small price to pay to make her point. The pensioner told the court: "For me, what we did on Loch Goil was the culmination of a whole life-time of campaigning. I felt as if I was doing something worthwhile and acting for the 80 per cent of people who don't want Trident in this country."

Ms Zelter, 41, from Norfolk, who was praised by the Sheriff Margaret Gimblett for conducting her own defence, has had previous opportunities to test the legal system. She was one of four women who were acquitted by an English jury in 1996 after causing £1.5 million of damage to a Hawk fighter jet shortly before the plane was to be exported to Indonesia.

When Ms Roder, 42, a social worker and mother of two from Denmark, heard about the Ploughshares campaign, she travelled to Scotland determined to join the protests. Months later, after a traumatic spell in jail and desperately missing her family, she was delighted yesterday to be finally allowed to go home.

For the women, their acquittal will end their activism, if not their support, for the campaign group which, after the sheriff's ruling, has secured international attention for their cause. Speaking at a press conference, Ms Zelter, said: "This is not a three-women show and no-one in the movement could expect us to continue to do this. It's now time for us to support others in their actions." The Scotsman 22/10/1999

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