Charges dropped against 14-year old & dad who tied themselves to Japanese Embassy

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

Sophie Wyness was arrest­ed with her father Mar­tin, 50, after tying them­selves to a stair­case inside the Lon­don build­ing on 24 Jan­u­ary.

Crim­i­nal tres­pass charges against the pair, from Here­ford, were dropped for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

How­ev­er, the school­girl claimed the case was dropped to avoid dam­ag­ing com­mer­cial ties with Japan.

Sophie said: “If they have resources to spend on triv­ial pros­e­cu­tions like this, they should real­ly be putting them into the fight against Japan’s bar­bar­ic whal­ing indus­try, which is ille­gal under inter­na­tion­al law.”

A spokesman for the CPS said it had dropped the charges for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

He said: “After fur­ther review it was decid­ed there was no longer a real­is­tic prospect of con­vic­tion.”

But Mr Wyness, a shop work­er, said he and his daugh­ter were guilty and had gone to court expect­ing to be sen­tenced.

“This is clear­ly a trav­es­ty and is bring­ing British law into dis­re­pute.

“They’re say­ing lack of evi­dence and yet we were guilty. They have all the evi­dence they want for a con­vic­tion.”

Dis­trict Judge Quentin Pur­dy lift­ed an order at the City of West­min­ster Mag­is­trates Court ban­ning the pub­li­ca­tion of Sophie’s name, after legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the BBC.

After the court hear­ing Sophie and her father deliv­ered a let­ter to the Japan­ese embassy ask­ing the ambas­sador to put pres­sure on his gov­ern­ment to end whal­ing.

Secu­ri­ty staff at the embassy stopped the pair enter­ing the build­ing, but agreed to pass the let­ter on.