An Axis of Logic correspondent writes:
"The three-week trial at Hove crown court ended today when the final two activists, accused of causing the damage to the Brighton factory, were acquitted. The jury had found the other five not guilty on Wednesday.
"The seven, who called themselves "decommissioners", had argued during the trial that they had a 'lawful excuse' to smash up the factory, because it was manufacturing military equipment for the Israeli military, which was illegally killing Palestinian civilians, including children."
(Two articles)
"Paul Hills, the Managing Director of EDO MBM, spent his five days on the witness stand last week being confronted with all the evidence gathered by campaigners over the years –evidence which exposes a complex network of collaboration between British, American and Israeli arms companies and the way in which their deals are clouded in secrecy."
"We Are The Accusers, Not The Accused"
Palestine Monitor
3 July 2010
More Action
On 16th January 2009 seven U.K. peace activists broke into the premises of EDO MBM, suppliers of weapons components and in the words of one of them, Elijah Smith ’set out to smash it up to the best of our abilities’.
for Palestine
It was an entirely accountable action which was always intended to end in a trial and each decommissioner had pre-recorded a video in which they stated the reasons for their participation –to help dismantle the war machine from the factory floor.
U.S. - Bay Area picket line stops Israeli ship from unloading
Once inside the building, they barricaded themselves in and set to work. Equipment used to make weapon components were trashed and computers, filing cabinets and office furnishings were thrown out of the windows. Once they were done they calmly waited for the police to arrest them. Two activists who supported them outside the factory gates were also on trial. All of the defendants have argued that what they did was not only morally necessary but crucially that it was legal. U.K law allows the commission of damage of property to prevent greater crimes.
Two of the accused, Simon Levin and Chris Osmond have extensive experience of working in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement. Chris Osmond told the court that ’the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza at that time meant it was imperative to act’. He cited the words of Rachel Corrie, the U.S activist who was killed by an IDF bulldozer in Rafah, as an inspiration. The court heard a passage of Corrie’s diary ’I’m witnessing this chronic insidious genocide and I’m really scared, this has to stop, I think it is a good idea idea for all of us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop’.
During the trial the court heard not only from the defendants themselves but from Sharyn Lock, who was an international human rights volunteer in Gaza during Cast Lead. She was inside Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City when it was attacked with white phosphorus. She concluded her evidence by saying that she had no doubt that those who armed the Israeli Air Force ’had the blood of children on their hands’. The jury saw footage of the air attacks on the UNWRA compounds where civilians were sheltering and have been given an edited version of the Goldstone report.
Recently elected member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas also gave evidence supporting the decommssioners, saying that the democratic process ’had been exhausted’ as far as the factory was concerned.
On January the 17th 2009 the bombs had already fallen relentlessly on Gaza for three weeks. Massive, passionate demonstrations and pickets had been held in many cities around the country and the world in protest against Israel’s war crimes, but to no avail. A growing sense of helplessness was grabbing hold of the movement as the Palestinian body count stood at over 1400 and counting. 300 of the dead were children. It was against this background that the “citizen’s decommissioning” of EDO MBM/ITT took place.
EDO/ITT is an arms manufacturer, based in Brighton since 1946. They were acquired along with the rest of EDO Corporation by the multinational arms conglomerate ITT in December 2007. Their primary business is the manufacture of weapons systems such as bomb release mechanisms and bomb racks. This includes crucially the manufacture of the VER-2 Zero Retention Force Arming Unit for the Israeli Air Force’s F16 war planes.
Over the years, EDO have consistently denied supplying Israel, and despite over fifty court cases campaigners were not able to properly expose the links between the factory and the IAF. However the serious nature of the charges against the seven (the factory sustained nearly £200,000 of damage and may not have recommenced production for weeks) means that for the first time courts took the argument that EDOs business is fundamentally illegal very seriously.
Paul Hills, the Managing Director of EDO MBM, spent his five days on the witness stand last week being confronted with all the evidence gathered by campaigners over the years –evidence which exposes a complex network of collaboration between British, American and Israeli arms companies and the way in which their deals are clouded in secrecy. The Decommissioners were able to present Mr Hills, for the first time, with a dossier of evidence showing how EDO MBM use a front company in the U.S.A to indirectly supply components for the F 16 to Israel. Under U.K law the supply of weapons components that might be used in the Occupied Territories is actually a crime.
After hearing Hills’ explanations of his company’s business practices, Judge George Bathurst-Norman said that, despite Hill’s denials of dealing with Israel, it was clear that their was enough evidence to justify a genuinely held belief they did. He also offered the opinion that End User Certificates required for arms export licences were “ not worth the paper they are written on” as they can be easily manipulated.
There is a history of juries in British courts finding anti-war activists not guilty when they attack machinery used in war crimes. In 1996 four women from Trident Ploughshares decommissioned a Hawk jet that was about to be shipped to Indonesia – they were found not guilty. In 2008 the Raytheon 9, who damaged a factory in Derry supplying weapons to Israel during the 2006 Lebanon war, were acquitted by a jury and only two weeks ago a group of nine women carrying out a similar action at Raytheon during the Gaza attacks were also found not guilty by an unanimous jury.
On Friday, the jury found Simon Levin, Tom Woodhead, Ornella Saibene, Bob Nicholls, Harvey Tadman, Elijah Smith and Chris Osmond not guilty of “Conspiracy to Cause Criminal damage” by unanimous verdict in Hove Crown Court.
Chris Osmond said “This action was taken because of EDO MBMs illegal supply of weapons to the Israeli military. We brought the suffering of ordinary Palestinians into a British courtroom and confronted with the evidence they took the brave decision to find that our actions were justified.”
The decommissioners’ stance made it clear to companies like EDO that they can no longer count on not being held to account for their actions. There are now a growing number of people in the international community who are willing to risk their own liberty to stand up for the people of Gaza and to challenge Israel’s war crimes through whatever means possible.
VICTORY DEMO - EDO MBM - Monday 5th July 2010, 12 noon
All Decommissioners acquitted -Resisting War Crimes is Officially not a Crime
The EDO Decommissioners have all walked free after unanimous acquittals following the three week trial which concluded on Friday (2nd July) at Hove Crown Court. What began as a trial of the Decommissioners effectively ended up with the Brighton arms manufacturer, and the war crimes of the Israeli state, in the dock. Is it all over for EDO/ITT in Brighton? It might be now...
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"It's a real victory for the anti-war movement, The jury were presented with the facts and they supported our motivations. If people in Britain knew the truth away from media manipulations they would all support our actions" - Ornella Sabeine, EDO Decommissioner.
After a nail-biting twenty-four hiatus, the jury came to decision on the Decommissioners Case - 100% Not Guilty! Six of the seven defendants Tom Woodhead, Bob Nicholls, Ornella Saibene, Harvey Tadman, Simon Levin and Chris Osmond came smiling out of Hove Trial Centre at the end of a gruelling three and half week trial. Elijah Smith was remanded in custody for another offence. Five were acquitted on Wednesday afternoon, the other two Chris and Elijah had to wait until this morning. They had waited eighteen months for this moment.
The jury decisions were all completely unanimous, an indication perhaps of the depth of feeling ignited by the evidence presented of war atrocities committed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
It was on the night of the 16th January 2009 that six activists broke into EDO MBM's manufacturing facility on Home Farm Rd Brighton. For an hour they wreaked havoc with hammers. Filing cabinets and computers were hurled from top-floor window. Machinery was also sabotaged. One of the reasons that the six had so much time in the factory was ironically that Sussex police saw a bomb in the car-park and cordoned off the area for specialists to arrive. The 'bomb' was in fact a dummy, a prop for EDO to display at trade fairs, precision guided out of an upstairs window by the decommissioners.
The six had pre-recorded videos to be posted on Indymedia after the action You can watch these here. In his video Elijah Smith said "I don't feel I'm going to do anything illegal tonight, but I'm going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually produce munitions and these very dirty bombs that have been provided to the Israeli army so that they can kill children. The time for talking has gone too far. I'm not a writer, I'm just a person from the community and I'm deeply disgusted".
The jury requested to view those videos again before they made their historic decision ...and they obviously liked what they saw.
In effect the trial was turned around: it was EDO MBM in the shape of managing director Paul Hills who found themselves in the dock. Laughably they had come to court intending to pass themselves off as a company primarily manufacturing in-flight entertainment equipment. He was presented with a dossier of evidence painstakingly built up over the years by campaigners, which pointed firmly at the company's complicity in war crimes.
Paul Hills was due to be giving evidence again on Thursday after accusing a campaigner of intimidating him as a witness at the regular weekly noise demo. Funnily enough Hills wasn't available at the time and the court heard that he was flying to the U.S. Perhaps we should spare a thought for Paul standing right now in front of ITTs board explaining how a bunch of goddam two-bit limey punks were able to smash his factory up with hammers and walk out of court smiling.
The answer is that Paul Hill's evidence was more full of holes than his factory's windows. Here's just a few edited highlights of five days of his cross-examination.
Hills revealed that the company have owned the rights to the main bomb rack used on Israeli F-16s - the VER-2 - since 1998. He admitted removing website evidence of his company's dealings with Israel as early as 2004, the date of the first protests. He admitted having interfered with the crime scene, retrieving debris and papers, before police photographers arrived. He claimed to have police permission but no police statement backed him up. There has been speculation that £189,000 is actually an underestimate of the damage caused and that more controversial evidence may have been spirited away. After being warned at one stage by the judge that he was at risk of perjuring himself if he contradicted evidence he'd produced in earlier court cases, crucially he ended by admitting that anyone looking at the evidence presented to him in court would form the reasonable belief that his company was involved in arms sales to Israel.
It was this that the defendants needed to convince the jury of - that there was an obvious link between this factory and the bombardment of Gaza.
A witness, Sharyn Lock, provided the background necessary for the jury to understand the full scope of the horror then unfolding in Gaza. Now a trainee midwife, in 2009 she was a human-rights volunteer in Al-Quds hospital, Gaza City. She was in the Gaza strip for the whole of Operation Cast Lead, and able to show footage of a missile strike on the hospital, just metres from the maternity ward. The jury also saw news reports of the white phosphorus attacks on the UNWRA compound, which incinerated much-needed food and medicine. Sharyn closed her evidence by saying she had no doubt that those who armed the Israeli Air Force 'had the blood of children on their hands'.
After hearing of the verdict she told SchNEWS "Brilliant news. I am so proud not only of the eight UK civilians who risked their liberty to protect fellow civilians whom they may never meet - but also of the jury who recognised that it is everyone's responsibility to uphold international law, even if that means decommissioning the weapons."
By the time this went to print the news of the verdict was spreading. Right-wing nutjob and Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips was first in with her considered opinion on 'the ignorance and bigotry of the judge'. The Israeli ambassador was crying foul saying that it was 'not a great era of the British system' (sic) - according to Israeli news source he was reportedly 'furious' at the judges 'blatant anti-semitic stand'. Even David Icke put it up on his website.
On the more positive side, the decommissioners were congratulated by Noam Chomsky, who said "I would like to express my respect and admiration for those who are undertaking non-violent resistance to oppose British participation in Israel's cruel crimes in Gaza".
So what next for Smash EDO? Unable to extract any usable quotes from the after-verdict party at the Community Garden, SchNEWS spoke to an increasingly bleary eyed Andrew Beckett, press spokesman for the campaign: "When we first started banging pots and pans outside the factory back in 2004, we never believed we'd get anywhere like this. EDO must be reeling, their dirty laundry is now flapping out there for the whole world to see. We're not to going to let up the pressure on this factory - watch this space".