Three have already pleaded Guilty - support the rest
Support the SHAC 8 | 10.10.2008 07:38 | SHAC | Animal Liberation | South Coast
Support the SHAC 8
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Support the SHAC 8 | 10.10.2008 07:38 | SHAC | Animal Liberation | South Coast
Support the SHAC 8
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Comments
Hide the following 14 comments
question
10.10.2008 09:19
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
Confused
Winchester Crown Court
10.10.2008 10:48
smash HLS
Perhaps...
10.10.2008 11:37
Len Hen
Oh get a grip confused
10.10.2008 12:17
Bob
smash HLS
10.10.2008 12:47
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
Billy Bunter
They are *not* accused of sending abusive letters, etc.
10.10.2008 15:09
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
This simply dosn't make sense.
Now really Confused
Stop swallowing!
11.10.2008 18:19
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
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
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
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