Press Releases & Updates 2003

Gillian Sloan (40), from Edinburgh, and Dave Rolstone (56), from Wales, were arrested last August after spray-painting the word "Vile" and the CND symbol on HMS Vigilant in its high security berth at Faslane naval base. Today, at Dumbarton, Sheriff Pettigrew fined them £50 for breaching the military by-laws and £200 for the alleged malicious mischief.

In a night time operation Dave and Gillian swam into the brightly-lit base, evading the scrutiny of patrol boats and armed shore-based guards in what was described at the time in a Scotsman editorial as the biggest breach of security since the attack on the World Trade Centre in September 2001.

Both registered disappointment that a Sheriff who had allowed them to present a defence based on international humanitarian law and took time to consider their case in the end came down with a conventional judgement.

Dave said: "Again the Scottish legal system has failed lamentably to recognise the simplest principle of international humanitarian law - that it is wrong to plan the murder of innocent civilians. The Sheriff said that there was no rule in customary international law that justified damaging property. So, in his view, someone who disabled a truck providing poison gas to be used on Halabja in Iraq in 1988 and thus attempted to prevent that massacre, would not have been justified in doing so under international law. That is utter nonsense."

There was crumb of comfort. The wetsuits, paint and other equipment Dave and Gillian used last August were not confiscated by the court and so will be available for future actions.

Meanwhile at Helensburgh District Court Jim Kinnaird, a 48 year-old community worker from Bristol, was fined £60 for taking part in a blockade of Faslane in February last year.

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