Press Releases & Updates 2004

Sue Brackenbury from Faslane Peace Camp and Micah Barratt from Edinburgh were each fined £150 for a five-person of blockade last October which caused a huge tailback to base worker traffic at Faslane. Justice of the Peace Viv Dance gave Micah 28 days to pay and a Supervised Attendance Order of 30 hours should he fail to pay, but she respected Sue’s determination not to do a Supervised Attendance Order. Sue is the only one of those arrested yesterday who is still in custody, having been detained to appear in Ayr Sheriff Court tomorrow to explain why she has not paid a fine for a previous Trident action.

Yesterday a number of foreign nationals arrested at the blockade were released on an undertaking to appear at court today. In an unexplained change of tack by the Procurator Fiscal, when they turned up at court they were told that this was no longer required.

Morag Balfour and Brian Brown appeared for trial, only to be told that the Crown had now accepted their not guilty pleas. The case against David Turner was dropped after the police witnesses had given particularly unimpressive testimony.

The 76 arrests have added to the extensive backlog of protest cases that this court faces. On average the court deals with these cases on two days in every week.

A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said: "The solution for the overstretched and disorganised local criminal justice system is obvious. Drop all the Trident cases now. It is clearly not in the public interest to prosecute people for peaceful protest against weapons of mass destruction which the people of Scotland do not want."

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