Press Releases & Updates 1998

The five Trident Ploughshares activists who are on remand at HMP Cornton Vale in connection with alleged offences relating to their disarmament activities during the August phase of TP2000’s campaign, have been strip-searched and punished by the prison authorities after their modest protest, not against the prison regime, but against the roll-out of Britain’s latest Trident submarine, HMS Vengeance, at Barrow -in-Furness on Saturday.

The women were strip-searched on Friday night. At this time a banner, made of newspaper strips stuck on to sheets with toothpaste, and reading: NO ESCAPE . . FROM TRIDENT, which they intended to drop from their cell windows on Saturday morning, was taken from them.

On Saturday the women remained in their cells and refrained from speaking and eating. The response of the prison authorities was to handcuff them and lead them to separate cells outwith the remand unit. Angie Zelter refused to co-operate, but although her refusal was passive and entirely non-violent, she was stripped and forcibly removed to a punishment cell, where she spent the day naked and in pain. Said fellow prisoner Helen John, "They really hurt Angie." Another of the remanded prisoners, Krista van Velzen said, "They hurt Katri Silvonen too. She was really upset in the chapel this morning."

The prisoners have been deprived of access to personal cash for the remaining period of their remand, which means that items essential for their communication with families and the outside world, such as phone cards, stamps and envelopes, will not be available to them. They have also been deprived of recreation for five days.

Responding to concern that the women might not have access to legal materials for their defence, Prison Officer Tony Quinn, Supervisor of Younger Block, assured Angie Zelter’s agent that she would have these materials when she wished.

Supervisor Quinn also fully recognised that the protest was in no way directed at the prison authorities but was the women’s way of continuing their resistance to the UK’s Trident nuclear system of mass destruction which was given a further boost by the addition of a fourth Trident submarine yesterday.

As full details of the treatment of the women emerges, especially that of Angie Zelter and Katri Silvonen, TP2000 will keep the civil rights and human welfare implications of the prison authorities’ actions under continued scrutiny.

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