Shell to Sea supporters occupy Shell office in Belmullet in Support of Maura Harrington

Mon­day, 16th March 2009, sev­en mem­bers of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp occu­pied the Shell office in Bel­mul­let, Coun­ty Mayo, for over an hour, in sup­port of Mau­ra Har­ring­ton. Mau­ra has now been in jail for six days of her thir­ty day sen­tence.

Shell office occupationMon­day, 16th March 2009, sev­en mem­bers of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp occu­pied the Shell office in Bel­mul­let, Coun­ty Mayo, for over an hour, in sup­port of Mau­ra Har­ring­ton. Mau­ra has now been in jail for six days of her thir­ty day sen­tence.

The camp mem­bers of the camp entered the office and held up a ban­ner read­ing “Free Mau­ra”. Shell’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion offi­cer Christy Lof­tus came into the lob­by and field­ed ques­tions from the group for the entire peri­od. Some peo­ple made it into the main part of the build­ing; dur­ing this time the fire alarms went off in the build­ing. Gar­daí were called to the office, came inside and asked the group to leave. The group remained in the build­ing for anoth­er 45 min­utes ques­tion­ing Christy Lof­tus and then left lat­er of their own accord. No one was arrest­ed.

Also this morn­ing, the Shell to Sea trail­er was opened at Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery site.
Shell to Sea cam­paign­er Pat O’Donnell awoke this morn­ing to find that the win­dows on his boat had been bro­ken. It is not clear whether the van­dal­ism is relat­ed to the cam­paign against Shell, but it was clear­ly tar­get­ed at O’Donnell’s boat, which was the only one dam­aged out of a boat yard of over 20 boats. This is the sec­ond time his boat has been tar­get­ed in the past two years.

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On Wednes­day the 11th of March, Shell to Sea cam­paign­er, Mau­ra Har­ring­ton was sen­tenced to 28 days in prison after Judge Mary Devins found her guilty of assault­ing a Gar­da dur­ing the inci­dent at Pol­lath­omais Pier on the 11th June 2007. For sen­tenc­ing for the Sec­tion 2 assault, Judge Devins sen­tenced her to 28 days in prison along with a €1000 fine along with a €1000 dona­tion to the Gar­da Benev­o­lent Fund and that she be bound to the peace for 1 year. Ms Har­ring­ton how­ev­er refused to sign the bond and so received 2 days in prison for con­tempt to be run con­cur­rent with her oth­er sen­tence. Judge Devins also direct­ed Ms Har­ring­ton to under­go psy­chi­atric assess­ment. Judge Mary Devins is the wife of Gov­ern­ment Min­ster, Jim­my Devins.

On thw 11th June 2007, known local­ly as ‘Black Mon­day’, Gar­dai vio­lent­ly removed pro­test­ers attempt­ing to stop the ille­gal instal­ment of a Shell por­ta­cab­in on the land of pub­li­can Pad­dy McGrath near Pol­lath­omais. Pad­dy suf­fered a stroke and was hos­pi­tal­ized for sev­er­al months. Many peo­ple suf­fered injuries and despite com­plaints, no Gar­da has received even a cau­tion.

Please send mes­sages of sup­port to:
Mau­ra Har­ring­ton
Dochas Cen­tre
Moun­tjoy Prison
N Cir­cu­lar Road
Dublin 7

Shell are due to start work from April onwards, come over if you can!

rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com