Press Releases & Updates 1998

At Helensburgh District Court today, Anja and Jens Light and Angie Zelter were found guilty and admonished on charges of malicious mischief and the breach of bye-laws connected with their disarmament actions during the Trident Ploughshares 2000 action at Coulport in August.

Justice Of The Peace Stirling said that he was finding them guilty " with regret " He congratulated them on the quality of their defence and the manner in which they had conducted themselves and said that he would in due course issue a written judgement.

While accepting that the JP had come a fair distance in reaching the verdict that he did Angie Zelter has indicated that she will appeal.

"Beyond any doubt we proved to the Court that our actions, far from being reckless, were planned and executed after long thought and consideration as the only way of preventing the nuclear crime that is being committed by the UK. We have learned nothing from the Nuremberg principles, and nothing from war crimes in Ruanda and former Yugoslavia if Scottish courts can still not grasp the fact that international humanitarian law applies locally and universally."

Earlier in the day JP Stirling had found Cambridge University student Gaynor Barrett guilty of Breach of the Peace and fined her £150. Gaynor’s crime had been to pick up litter from the roadway outside the South Gate of the Faslane nuclear weapons base.

Meanwhile Angie Zelter has been giving more information about the abuse suffered by her and fellow prisoners at the hands of prison staff in HMP Cornton Vale. When told about Governor Kate Donnegan’s attempt at a whitewash Angie said: "This talk of a roof-top protest and inciting other prisoners to riot is utter nonsense. On Friday night the staff already had a written account of our planned protest, which made it absolutely clear that it was not directed against the prison regime, that it was limited to remaining in our cells, not speaking and not eating for a day. On Saturday they bent my thumb back along with my wrist and applied pressure, causing excruciating pain. I was pinned to the floor of the punishment cell, stripped and left alone in the cell and my clothes were taken away. It was a total abuse of power. It is utterly horrifying to think that this sort of behaviour is described as ’standard procedure’."

There may well be a connection between the staff reaction at Cornton and an event in Barrow-in-Furness on Friday night. Lindis Percy, a peace campaigner from Yorkshire, drove her car right inside the VSEL shipyard and settled down to watch preparations for Saturday’s roll out of HMS Vengeance, Britain’s latest addition to the nuclear weapons fleet. She fell asleep in the car and was discovered by the shipyard security. They called Cumbria Police, who arrived in full riot gear and threatened to smash in her windscreen and attack her with CS gas. She offered to get out of the car but was ordered to remain inside. The police arranged instead for a fork-lift truck to lift her car, with her still in it, and deposit it outside the yard. She was then charged with vagrancy and summoned to appear in Barrow Magistrates Court on the 5th October.

Said CND worker Nigel Chamberlain: "This was an act of intimidation against a single woman who offered no threat or argument and it demonstrates how desperate the authorities have become since the launch of Trident Ploughshares 2000."

Perhaps the Cornton incident arises from similar desperation.

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