Press Releases & Updates 2001
3rd October 2001
Terrifying Evidence From Defence Expert Witness in Trident Trial
Nuclear Attack on Baghdad in NATO Scenario
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In the trial of two anti-Trident activists Manchester Crown Court today
heard terrifying evidence about the nature and likelihood of nuclear war
from a defence expert witness.
On 1st February 1999 defendants Rachel Wenham and Rosie James swam to and
boarded the Trident nuclear weapon submarine HMS Vengeance, then docked at
Barrow-in-Furness. They draped banners, painted slogans and damaged testing
equipment on the conning tower.
This morning defence expert witness Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford
University gave disturbing evidence of the dangers of the nuclear age.
While the risk of an all-out nuclear war had receded since the end of the
Cold War the chances of a "limited" nuclear exchange, causing millions of
deaths, had in fact increased. NATO had in constant readiness a nuclear war
plan and in the NATO "War Game" paper scenario of 1995 a Middle East crisis
had been posited. Against the strategists’ prior expectations this led to a
nuclear strike on Baghdad in response to a biological attack on US troops.
Professor Rogers had also estimated that the explosive power of the
combined aircraft fuel and collapsing concrete in Manhattan on September
11th had been roughly equal to 650 tons of high explosive. He pointed out
that each of the 48 warheads carried on a Trident submarine had a payload
equal to 100,000 tons of high explosive.
Summing up for the Crown prosecutor Dennis Watson acknowledged that the
women were sincere in their beliefs but their opinions about the danger of
Trident gave them no right to break the law. Cars are, in the opinion of
many nasty and dangerous, but that does not give people the right to go
about smashing them. For Rosie barrister Marguerite Russell asked the jury
to consider the evidence they had heard about the dangers of nuclear
weapons. The women had acted in response to a danger that was imminent in
the sense that it could happen at any time. Their act had not been a
frenzied attack but a brave and deliberate one.
Rachel told the court how the US, with the connivance of the UK and in full
knowledge of the short and long term effects, had dropped atom bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing had changed since then except for the names
of those in power and the great increase in the destructive power of the
bombs.
With only the judge’s summing-up to come a verdict is likely tomorrow.
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