S.I. Activist Imprisoned by the Icelandic State

Sav­ing Ice­land
24 July 2007

The Ice­landic gov­ern­ment and ALCOA have gained their first polit­i­cal pris­on­er with their repres­sion of protest against the heavy indus­try pol­i­cy.

A twen­ty three year old British Sav­ing Ice­land activist who was arrest­ed today on the action against Rio Tin­to-Alcan, has been impris­oned for eight days.

Appar­ent­ly the activist was told by the Ice­landic police that she was to pay a 100.000 kro­nur (£840) fine for her involve­ment in protests against ALCOA in the east of Ice­land in the sum­mer of 2006, or face prison. She chose the lat­ter.

At this time we do not know where she will be held.

Oth­er for­eign pro­test­ers have their pass­ports held at ran­som by the police for fines based on accu­sa­tions for obstruct­ing the police, but no actu­al charges.

Here at Sav­ing Ice­land we seem to remem­ber that pass­ports are the prop­er­ty of the States that they are issued in.

Thus, not for the first time, the Ice­landic police may actu­al­ly be breach­ing inter­na­tion­al law by black­mail­ing for­eign cit­i­zens who are exer­cis­ing their demo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest against the cor­rupt heavy indus­try pol­i­cy that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to main­tain.

In March this year the Left-Green par­ty in Ice­land called in par­lia­ment for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the con­duct of the Ice­landic police against Sav­ing Ice­land pro­test­ers in the the years of 2005 and 2006.

It is high time that the auto­crat­ic and fre­quent­ly vio­lent meth­ods of the Ice­landic police against peace­ful pro­test­ers come under seri­ous scruti­ny.

http://www.savingiceland.org/node/887