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Press Releases & Updates 2001
21st May 2001
Focus on Chelmsford as Jubilee Ploughshares Trial Starts
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There is already considerable public interest in the Chelmsford Crown Court
trial of the Jubilee Ploughshares nuclear disarmers which began today with
the selection of the jury and with embarrassing admissions being dragged
out of Ministry of Defence prosecution witnesses.
Susan van der Hijden (32), from Amsterdam, and Father Martin Newell (33),
from Canning Town in London, are charged with two counts of criminal
damage, totalling £31,000, after their disarmament work on a convoy truck
used to carry nuclear warheads at Wittering in November last year.
About one hundred people gathered outside the court as the trial began,
including Art Laffin, who in 1989 damaged a US Trident submarine. Inside,
during cross examination by the defence a MoD police witness, after
attempting not to answer the question on the basis of the Official Secrets
Act, was eventually compelled to admit that nuclear weapons were kept in
Wittering during transportation. Similarly, it was admitted that a Harrier
jump jet had crashed at the base in 1997. If a loaded convoy truck was hit
during such an accident deadly plutonium could be spread over a huge area.
The MoD witnesses contradicted the defendants’ statements that they had had
to waken up the duty guard to announce their presence.
A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said: "Susan and Martin’s
single-mindedness and integrity have already been an inspiration to many
people world wide to continue the witness and struggle against weapons of
mass destruction."
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