Three have already pleaded Guilty - support the rest

Support the SHAC 8 | 10.10.2008 07:38 | SHAC | Animal Liberation | South Coast

The second week of a 3 month trial draws to a close - little support has been shown at the court.

Support the SHAC 8 - on trial for Blackmail and facing multiple years terms of inprisionment - three have already pleaded guilty leaving the remaining 5 to fight to fight these politically motivated charges.

Support the SHAC 8

Support the SHAC 8

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

question

10.10.2008 09:19

which court ?

what time does it start on monday ?

what's going on - is it still the prosecution opening

interested

What the hell is SHAC?????

10.10.2008 10:42

Just what on earth id SHAC? Why don't you explain what this is about?

Confused

Winchester Crown Court

10.10.2008 10:48

The trial is at Winchester Crown Kangaroo Court and is expected to take several months.

smash HLS

Perhaps...

10.10.2008 11:37

Perhaps there's little support because people are opposed to their pathetic tactic of targeting innocent children.

Len Hen

Oh get a grip confused

10.10.2008 12:17

you are on a computer.............. I bet you could type google and then SHAC........ i.t.s... n.o.t...v.e.r.y....d.i.f.f.i.c.u.l.t...

Bob

smash HLS

10.10.2008 12:47

SHAC is Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a legal campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, a contract animal testing laboratory in Cambridgeshire.

Several people from SHAC are charged with conspiracy to blackmail - not for doing anything illegal, but for being part of a legal campaign where other unknown people took illegal action.

And in answer to Len Hen: a) SHAC is a lawful group, which was explicitly acknowledged by a judge. b) Children have never been targeted, by SHAC or its supporters. c) The violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by Huntingdon Life Sciences on animals, both adult and juvenile. Thousands die in HLS every month.

SHAC has a massive amount of support, unlike HLS, who are pariahs in the business world.

SHAC = Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty

The accusations

10.10.2008 13:15

The accusation, as mentioned, is that they were involved in a six-year blackmail campaign targetting those with any links to Huntingdon Life Sciences.

They are accused of sending threatening letters, hoax bombs, and sanitary towels supposedly contaminated with HIV to companies that did business with the lab. And visiting people at their homes at night, putting their and their families personal details on websites and so on.

Those are just the accusations - whether they are true or not will be up to the court to decide.

Of course, the convictions are "politically motivated" (because, you know, people do stuff like that all the time without the police getting involved....) And obviously, three people pleaded guilty for doing nothing wrong. It's all entirely circumstantial.

SHAC explicitly says on its website that it does not encourage illegal activities. And its supporters include Jilly Cooper.

(And don't knock Confused - if you're going to post you might as well explain what your acronym is about. This isn't an internal newsletter).

Norville B

Of course!

10.10.2008 14:38

Of course SHAC says on its website it does not condone illegal activities - they aren't that stupid. But we all know that they 'understand' why people commit illegal activities, although most people have absolutely no understanding at all as to how some SHAC supporters can dig up bodies and attack children on their way to school.

Billy Bunter

They are not accused of sending abusive letters, etc.

10.10.2008 15:09

re: The accusations, from Norville B.

The SHAC defendants are *not* accused of "sending threatening letters, hoax bombs, and sanitary towels supposedly contaminated with HIV to companies that did business with the lab. And visiting people at their homes at night, putting their and their families personal details on websites and so on."

The media reports are just publishing details of those actions (carried out by persons unknown) so people will wrongly get that impression.

If they had done those things they would be charged with sending abusive mail or making hoax bomb threats.

All they are charged with is running the legal campaign to close down the animal abuse hellhole that is Huntingdon Life Sciences. Blackmail is a very vague charge, it doesn't that you threaten anything illegal. In a sense every single pressure group campaign is "blackmail" since you are applying pressure to get someone to do something they don't want to do.

The only reason they are using the blackmail charge is that they couldn't find anything genuinely illegal that SHAC had done, so they abuse this law to try to censor a legal campaign that troubles the establishment.

smash HLS

if they have done nothing wrong....

11.10.2008 12:06

Why have they pleaded GUILTY?

This simply dosn't make sense.

Now really Confused

Stop swallowing!

11.10.2008 18:19

Either there are some trolls on here or people are really swallowing police/government/corporate propoganda left right and centre. I kinda hope it's the former. Big business is scared of the financial impact of groups like SHAC and that is why they have brought in outrageously harsh legislation that applies to no other pressure groups and why they spread rumour and lies in an attempt to isolate them from supporters.
If you have half a brain cell, find out what animal torturers actually do to millions of animals. Find out what SHAC tries to do to protect them and then form an opinion instead of regurgitating Daily Mail-type headlines.

bee

reply to "Now really Confused"

11.10.2008 18:36

"Now really Confused" asks: if they have done nothing wrong.... Why have they pleaded GUILTY?

I can't speak for them, but since this is really a political case, not a legal case, and blackmail is such a vague and open-ended law, they decided they would get screwed over irrespective of the reality, and cut their losses.

If the government is really out to get you, they will.

smash HLS

Reply To Billy Bunter

11.10.2008 20:53

I actually think the more old grannies that get dug up the better. Nothing as much fun as a little bit of grannie digging.

Once you dig up what remains of the stiff. Why not do what these young dudes did. Got the right idea seems to me.

"Three Texas teens were charged with abuse of a corpse after they dug up a body and used the skull as a bong to smoke marijuana."

Frank Richards

support not requested yet

12.10.2008 18:41

As far as I understand the defendants would rather people did not come to court hence the lack of support. After all it does not create a good impression for loads of AR people to be in the public gallery and personally I think anyone who is thinking of attending court should check with the defendants first and of course people should go and support if this is requested.There are of course other ways to show support for example going to the gates at HLS for the weekly demo or just continuing with whatever is good for the animals and the earth.

Regarding some of the comments about the defendants, none of them have harmed any human living or dead and nor are they suspected of doing so. This is a very political trial which is all about stopping ordinary folk campaigning against big companies. By the way although I would not send used sanitary towels through the post myself (nor have any of the defendants) the threat about the aids virus is utterly empty as anyone with basic medical awareness will know the virus dies within seconds after leaving the human body (hepatitus would be more of a concern). All of the defendants are being accused of being responsible for the actions of other activists which does not bode well for ANYONE campaigning on ANY issue.

lynn sawyer