Category: Animal Rights/Liberation

Sea Shepherd update — whaling shut-down, and skirmishes

Feb­ru­ary 8 2010
Sea Shep­herd Has Shut Down Ille­gal Japan­ese Whal­ing

Steve Irwin Joins Pur­suit of Nis­shin Maru

The Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin joined the Sea Shep­herd ship Bob Bark­er this morn­ing at 0700 Hours (Syd­ney time). Both Sea Shep­herd ships are now on the tail of the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru.

Steve Irwin & Bob Baker confront whalersFeb­ru­ary 8 2010
Sea Shep­herd Has Shut Down Ille­gal Japan­ese Whal­ing

Steve Irwin Joins Pur­suit of Nis­shin Maru

The Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin joined the Sea Shep­herd ship Bob Bark­er this morn­ing at 0700 Hours (Syd­ney time). Both Sea Shep­herd ships are now on the tail of the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru.

The Japan­ese fleet was run­ning fast to the North­east not know­ing that the Steve Irwin was on a course of South­west com­ing direct­ly for them. With the fleet doing 15 knots, and the Steve Irwin doing 15 knots, the Steve Irwin and the whal­ing fleet closed the gap at 30 knots cut­ting the ren­dezvous time in half.

The Steve Irwin sat motion­less by an ice­berg for two hours at a dis­tance of thir­ty miles to allow the Nis­shin Maru to con­tin­ue towards it. At a dis­tance of only three miles, the Steve Irwin got under­way and inter­cept­ed the Nis­shin Maru.

As the Steve Irwin passed by the Nis­shin Maru, the fac­to­ry ship turned on their water can­nons and were sur­prised when the Steve Irwin respond­ed with a more pow­er­ful water can­non that had a cou­ple of the whalers div­ing for the bridge doors as the frigid water struck their bridge wing deck.

The Steve Irwin is present­ly tail­ing the Nis­shin Maru a few cable lengths and slight­ly to the port side of the fac­to­ry ship. Across from the Steve Irwin, the Bob Bark­er is tail­ing the Nis­shin Maru slight­ly to the star­board side.

Fol­low­ing in the wake of the Nis­shin Maru are the Japan­ese ves­sels Shonan Maru 2, Yushin Maru 1 and Yushin Maru 2. There is no sign of the Yushin Maru 3.

Six ships, two from Sea Shep­herd and four ves­sels from the Japan­ese fleet, are head­ing at full speed north­east­ward­ly.

“Not a sin­gle whale has died since the Bob Bark­er inter­cept­ed the fleet at 0100 Hours on Feb­ru­ary 6th. It is now the third day that the whal­ing fleet has been unable to kill a whale. We intend to turn these three whal­ing free days into three whal­ing free weeks,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I am con­fi­dent that once again we will severe­ly cut their kill quo­tas and we will once again negate their prof­its.”

The Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er have enough fuel to pur­sue the whal­ing fleet for anoth­er month.

“It does not mat­ter where they go, east or west along the Antarc­tic Coast,” said Steve Irwin 1st Offi­cer Locky MacLean. “We intend to stick to their rear like glue and we will not allow a sin­gle whale to be loaded onto the decks of that foul float­ing abat­toir.”

There are 41 crew (29 men and 12 women) on board the Steve Irwin from Aus­tralia, Bermu­da, Brazil, Cana­da, Esto­nia, France, Japan, Hun­gary, the Nether­lands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Swe­den, the Unit­ed King­dom, and the Unit­ed States (15 nation­al­i­ties).

There are 30 (6 women and 24 men) crew on board the Bob Bark­er from Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Unit­ed States, Swe­den, Unit­ed King­dom, and South Africa (6 nation­al­i­ties).

—

Feb­ru­ary 09, 2010
Sea Shep­herd Escorts Whal­ing Fleet Out of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary

The Sea Shep­herd ships Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er have suc­cess­ful­ly escort­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet out of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

After repeat­ed orders from Sea Shep­herd to desist their ille­gal activ­i­ties and remove them­selves from the South­ern Ocean, the Nis­shin Maru, Yushin Maru, Yushin Maru #2 and Shonan Maru #2 have crossed north of six­ty degrees and con­tin­ue to head North by North­west.

“We did not actu­al­ly expect them to fol­low our orders to quit the Whale Sanc­tu­ary but they have indeed exit­ed and are now run­ning out­side the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary”, Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son, “They have not killed a sin­gle whale since Feb­ru­ary 5th. We intend to turn four whal­ing free days into weeks.”

At 0500 Hours on Feb­ru­ary 7th the Nis­shin Maru was inter­cept­ed by the Steve Irwin at 64 Degrees 2 Min­utes South and 80 Degrees 11 Min­utes East. The whal­ing fleet then ran North­east for 95 miles on a course of 060 Degrees and then changed course at 1600 Hours on Feb­ru­ary 7th to 260 Degrees began to run North­west for 260 miles. The whal­ing fleet left the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary at 1830 Hours (Syd­ney Time) at 60 Degrees South and 77 Degrees East. (Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2010)

The Sea Shep­herd ships Steve Irwin and Bob Bark­er con­tin­ue to chase the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet.

“We intend to keep on their tail and to pre­vent any whal­ing oper­a­tions for as long as our fuel reserves last and that should be for anoth­er few weeks at least,” Said Bob Bark­er cap­tain Chuck Swift.

The Sea Shep­herd ships are with the entire whal­ing fleet except the Yushin Maru #3. That ship has not been seen since the col­li­sion with the Bob Bark­er on Feb­ru­ary 6th.

—

Feb­ru­ary 11 2010
Five-Hour Bat­tle At the Gate­way of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary

A bat­tle erupt­ed between the Sea Shep­herd ships Bob Bark­er and Steve Irwin and the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet when the whalers ignored a warn­ing from Sea Shep­herd to not reen­ter the South­ern Ocean Sanc­tu­ary.

The Japan­ese fleet was escort­ed out of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary at 1530 Hours on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 9th. They left the Sanc­tu­ary at 60 Degrees South and 76 Degrees and 36 Min­utes East.

The fleet fled north on a course of 310 Degrees to the posi­tion of 57 Degrees 14 Min­utes South and 69 Degrees 6 min­utes East and then turned back one hun­dred and eighty degrees and head­ed back towards the Sanc­tu­ary on a course of 230 at 1700 Hours on Feb­ru­ary 10th.

At 1650 on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 11th the Japan­ese fleet reen­tered the Whale Sanc­tu­ary at 60 Degrees South and 62 Degrees East.

As the Japan­ese fleet reen­tered the Whale Sanc­tu­ary, the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin pulled up along­side the Nis­shin Maru to deliv­er a mes­sage by loud­speak­er in Japan­ese warn­ing them not to enter the Whale Sanc­tu­ary. The Nis­shin Maru respond­ed with water can­non and LRAD fire. The Steve Irwin returned water can­non fire.

The Steve Irwin then attempt­ed to launch a heli­copter when the three har­poon ves­sels moved in with water can­nons and LRADs blaz­ing in an attempt to destroy the heli­copter on the deck. The Bob Bark­er moved into posi­tion to block the har­poon ves­sels and the Steve Irwin was forced to fire warn­ing flares in front of the har­poon ves­sels to force them to back off.

The six ships, four whaler and two con­ser­va­tion ves­sels, engaged for over five hours. There were many near miss­es but no col­li­sions. There were no injuries.

A Sea Shep­herd Delta launched from the Steve Irwin annoyed the har­poon ves­sels with rot­ten but­ter bomb attacks.

All ships have backed off and the con­voy of whalers and anti-whalers con­tin­ues in a South­west­ern direc­tion into the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

“Tomor­row marks a full week that not a whale has been killed,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “Our goal now is to make it two weeks and then three weeks. We will not tol­er­ate the death of a sin­gle whale. If they attempt to kill and trans­fer a whale to the Nis­shin Maru there will be inevitable col­li­sions, because we will nei­ther move out of harms way nor cease block­ing the slip­way. That I can promise.”

update from Sea Shepherd in Antartica fighting the whalers — arrest attempt & another ramming

Ady Gil Cap­tain Attempts to Serve Arrest War­rant to Cap­tain of the Shonan Maru No. 2

On Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 15, 2010, the crew of Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s ves­sel Bob Bark­er sur­prised, chased, and engaged the Shonan Maru No. 2, a secu­ri­ty ship from the ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing fleet. The engage­ment took place between the hours of 8:30 pm and 12:30 am (AEST).

Ady Gil Cap­tain Attempts to Serve Arrest War­rant to Cap­tain of the Shonan Maru No. 2

On Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 15, 2010, the crew of Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s ves­sel Bob Bark­er sur­prised, chased, and engaged the Shonan Maru No. 2, a secu­ri­ty ship from the ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing fleet. The engage­ment took place between the hours of 8:30 pm and 12:30 am (AEST).

The Shonan Maru No. 2 recent­ly achieved infamy when it vio­lent­ly attacked the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Ady Gil, threat­en­ing the lives of its crew and sink­ing the ves­sel due to sus­tained dam­age. Today though, the Shonan Maru No. 2 was on the run from the Bob Bark­er, the irony being that Sea Shep­herd adheres to a strict pol­i­cy of non-vio­lence and has an unblem­ished 30+ year record of nev­er caus­ing or sus­tain­ing any seri­ous injuries while at sea.

Under New Zealand law, a cit­i­zen is empow­ered to serve an arrest war­rant on a sus­pect for a crime that car­ries a penal­ty in excess of eight years impris­on­ment. The charge of attempt­ed mur­der qual­i­fies and thus Cap­tain Pete Bethune act­ed in accor­dance with New Zealand law in his attempt to serve the cap­tain of the Shonan Maru No. 2 who delib­er­ate­ly sank his ship and almost killed his crew and him­self.

After a sur­prise launch, one of Sea Shepherd’s small boats snuck up on the Shonan Maru No. 2 and over a peri­od of more than four hours the Bob Bark­er slow­ly closed the gap and harassed the ves­sel, order­ing it to stop and sub­mit to arrest for the crime of attempt­ed mur­der on the crew of the Ady Gil. Each eva­sive maneu­ver from the Shonan Maru No. 2 cost the whalers crit­i­cal speed.

Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son, Pres­i­dent and Founder of Sea Shep­herd, “Cap­tain Pete Bethune had lit­tle choice but to attempt to serve the arrest war­rant him­self. Down here at the edge of nowhere, with­out back up from his gov­ern­ment, he found he was the only sher­iff in town. A cap­tain of a ship that has been sunk by anoth­er cap­tain has the author­i­ty to bring his attack­er to jus­tice. Cap­tain Bethune has been attempt­ing to do just that.”

Attempts by this ille­gal whal­ing ves­sel to dis­cour­age the small boats launched by the Bob Bark­er includ­ed the use of Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs), sev­er­al very high-pres­sure water can­nons, and eva­sive maneu­vers. Some of the crew aboard the Shonan Maru No. 2 were also wear­ing cylin­ders on their backs attached to (as yet uniden­ti­fied) hand-held devices resem­bling weapons.

Once it became appar­ent that the Shonan Maru No. 2 would not sub­mit to the arrest, the Bob Bark­er turned around to con­tin­ue the hunt for the fac­to­ry ship of the ille­gal Japan­ese fleet. This will prove dif­fi­cult with the Shonan Maru No. 2 con­tin­u­ing to fol­low and mon­i­tor the Bob Bark­er, but Sea Shepherd’s flag ship Steve Irwin is also on the prowl for the ille­gal whal­ing fleet, and hopes are high that the float­ing house of blood known as the Nis­shin Maru will soon be located—and shut down.

—

Feb­ru­ary 6 2010
Bob Bark­er Rammed by Ille­gal Whaler

Nis­han Maru rams Bob Bark­er­At 1209 PM Fre­man­tle, Aus­tralia time, the Yushin Maru 3 inten­tion­al­ly rammed the Sea Shep­herd ship Bob Bark­er, pen­e­trat­ing it’s hull and endan­ger­ing the lives of it¹s crew. The col­li­sion occurred at 65 degrees 21 South, 67 degrees 58 East, about 180 miles off Cape Darn­ley in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry.

The Bob Bark­er had been active­ly block­ing the slip­way of the Nis­shin Maru, the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet’s fac­to­ry ship when the col­li­sion occurred. Four har­poon ships, the Yushin Maru 1, 2, and 3 and Shonan Maru 2, were cir­cling and mak­ing near pass­es to the stern and bow of the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel. The Bob Bark­er did not move from its posi­tion. At which point, the Yushin Maru 3 inten­tion­al­ly rammed the Bob Bark­er, cre­at­ing a 3‑foot long 4‑inch deep gash in the mid star­board side of the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel above the water­line.

No crew was injured dur­ing the col­li­sion. The Bob Bark­er con­tin­ues to block the slip­way of the Nis­shin Maru, pre­vent­ing the trans­fer of slaugh­tered whales and effec­tive­ly shut­ting down ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions.

The inci­dent demon­strates a con­tin­ued esca­la­tion of vio­lence by the ille­gal whalers in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son from the bridge of the Steve Irwin, cur­rent­ly en route to join the action, “Because the whalers got away basi­cal­ly scot-free with the out­ra­geous sink­ing of the Ady Gil, they now appar­ent­ly think they can do what­ev­er they want and they appear to have no qualms about endan­ger­ing Sea Shep­herd crew. What we real­ly need is for the gov­ern­ments of Aus­tralia and New Zealand to step up and start enforc­ing mar­itime laws in these waters, or who know what the whalers will do next. Aus­tralian and New Zealand lives are at risk every day in these waters.”

The crew of the Bob Bark­er noticed that the Yushin Maru 3 stopped mov­ing in the water short­ly after the impact, and appeared to be falling behind as the Bob Bark­er main­tained its posi­tion on the stern of the Nis­shin Maru. It’s pos­si­ble the Yushin Maru 3 dam­aged itself in the col­li­sion.

The Japan­ese whalers are far more aggres­sive this year than in past cam­paigns.

Mexico: Two Jailed For Earth Liberation Front Actions

Abra­ham López Martínez (age 16) and Fer­mín Gómez Tre­jo (age 17), have been held since Decem­ber 15, 2009 at a youth deten­tion cen­ter in Mex­i­co City. They are accused of dam­ag­ing prop­er­ty and crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tion, relat­ed to the burn­ing of nine pri­vate­ly-owned cars and a bomb attack against a Harley David­son deal­er, actions claimed by the Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra [Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front]. They are await­ing tri­al. Both are veg­an.

Abra­ham López Martínez (age 16) and Fer­mín Gómez Tre­jo (age 17), have been held since Decem­ber 15, 2009 at a youth deten­tion cen­ter in Mex­i­co City. They are accused of dam­ag­ing prop­er­ty and crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tion, relat­ed to the burn­ing of nine pri­vate­ly-owned cars and a bomb attack against a Harley David­son deal­er, actions claimed by the Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra [Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front]. They are await­ing tri­al. Both are veg­an.
Write to them via Anar­chist Black Cross-Mex­i­co: cna.mex@gmail.com

Source: http://www.directaction.info/prisoners.htm

Mexico: Coca-Cola targeted by ALF/ELF

On the night of Jan­u­ary 17 we decid­ed to go out to once again prove that this war has not end­ed, that our actions have not stopped and that we con­tin­ue to feel the rage that we have put into every action.
This time we put two pack­ages of explo­sives in the front win­dows of the offices of the bot­tler FEMSA, owned by the filthy multi­na­tion­al Coca-Cola. The win­dows were com­plete­ly destroyed in the explo­sion. The attack was car­ried out in Ecate­pec, Mex­i­co City.

Mexico: Coca-Cola targeted by ALF/ELFOn the night of Jan­u­ary 17 we decid­ed to go out to once again prove that this war has not end­ed, that our actions have not stopped and that we con­tin­ue to feel the rage that we have put into every action.
This time we put two pack­ages of explo­sives in the front win­dows of the offices of the bot­tler FEMSA, owned by the filthy multi­na­tion­al Coca-Cola. The win­dows were com­plete­ly destroyed in the explo­sion. The attack was car­ried out in Ecate­pec, Mex­i­co City.
Coca-Cola is an earth-destroy­ing com­pa­ny that caus­eS the extinc­tion of ani­mal species, that uses extreme human exploita­tion to pro­duce goods like soft drinks, and that claims and pri­va­tizes nat­ur­al resources. Coca-Cola, one of the com­pa­nies direct­ly respon­si­ble for envi­ron­men­tal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, has been vis­it­ed by us, anar­chists and lib­er­a­tionists; we have decid­ed in these cells to focus on qual­i­ty actions, strength­en­ing our­selves to expand our acts of sab­o­tage.
While it is true that 2008 and 2009 were years of quan­ti­ta­tive expan­sion, now it is 2010, a new year, with new strate­gies and new tac­tics, but with the same courage to act.
This action is ded­i­cat­ed with all our desire for free­dom to the pris­on­ers Víc­tor, Emmanuel, Abra­ham, Fer­mín, and Socor­ro of Tijua­na. We hope that direct sol­i­dar­i­ty mul­ti­plies in clan­des­tine actions, for their uncon­di­tion­al lib­er­a­tion.
We pre­pare our weapons for the cli­mate change sum­mit!
Hit­ting hard and flee­ing!

Frente de Lib­eración Ani­mal
Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra

anony­mous com­mu­nique trans­lat­ed by Bite Back

Japanese whale killers ram and destroy Sea Shepherd protest vessel the Ady Gil

6.1.2010
Ear­ly this morn­ing the Japan­ese whale killing ship Shonan Maru2 rammed and destroyed the Sea Shep­herd protest ves­sel the Ady Gil. It was a mir­a­cle no Sea Shep­herd crew were killed or seri­ous­ly injured.

From Sea Shep­herd CEO Steve Roest.

Sea Shepherd Ady Gil rammed6.1.2010
Ear­ly this morn­ing the Japan­ese whale killing ship Shonan Maru2 rammed and destroyed the Sea Shep­herd protest ves­sel the Ady Gil. It was a mir­a­cle no Sea Shep­herd crew were killed or seri­ous­ly injured.

From Sea Shep­herd CEO Steve Roest.
I was wok­en at 4am GMT to hear that the Japan­ese whaler and secu­ri­ty ves­sel Shonan Maru2 had delib­er­ate­ly rammed the small Sea Shep­herd inter­cept ves­sel Ady Gil. The Ady Gil had lost the front 3 metres of her nose com­plete­ly and it is a mir­a­cle nobody was seri­ous­ly injured or killed.

Cap­tain Wat­son has made the fol­low­ing state­ment to the press:

In an unpro­voked attack cap­tured on film, the Japan­ese secu­ri­ty ship Shonan Maru #2 delib­er­ate­ly rammed and caused cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age to the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Ady Gil.

Six crew crewmem­bers, four from New Zealand, one from Aus­tralia and one from the Nether­lands were imme­di­ate­ly res­cued by the crew of the Sea Shep­herd ship Bob Bark­er. None of the crew Ady Gil crew were injured.

The Ady Gil is believed to be sink­ing and chances of sal­vage are very grim.

Accord­ing to eye­wit­ness Cap­tain Chuck Swift on the Bob Bark­er, the attack hap­pened while the ves­sels were dead in the water. The Shonan Maru #2 sud­den­ly start­ed up and delib­er­ate­ly rammed the Ady Gil rip­ping eight feet of the bow of the ves­sel com­plete­ly off. Accord­ing to Cap­tain Swift, the ves­sel does not look like it will be saved.

“The Japan­ese whalers have now esca­lat­ed this con­flict very vio­lent­ly.” Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “If they think that our remain­ing two ships will retreat from the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary in the face of their extrem­ism, they will be mis­tak­en. We now have a real whale war on our hands and we have no inten­tion of retreat­ing.”

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son onboard the Steve Irwin is rac­ing towards the area at 16 knots but still remains some five hun­dred miles to the north. The Bob Bark­er will has tem­porar­i­ly stop the pur­suit of the Nis­shin Maru to res­cue the crew of the Ady Gil. The Japan­ese ships refused to acknowl­edge the May Day dis­tress of the Ady Gil and used the inci­dent to break away from the scene of the ram­ming.

The inci­dent took place at 64 Degrees and 03 Min­utes South and 143 Degrees and 09 Min­utes East

Until this morn­ing the Japan­ese were com­plete­ly unaware of the exis­tence of the Bob Bark­er. This newest addi­tion to the Sea Shep­herd fleet left Mau­ri­tius off the coast of Africa on Decem­ber 18th and was able to advance along the ice edge from the West as the Japan­ese were busy wor­ry­ing about the advance of the Steve Irwin from the North.

“This is a sub­stan­tial loss for our orga­ni­za­tion,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “The Ady Gil, the for­mer Earth­race ves­sel, rep­re­sents a loss of almost two mil­lion dol­lars. How­ev­er the loss of a sin­gle whale is of more impor­tance to us and we will not lose the Ady Gil in vain. This blow sim­ply strength­ens our resolve, it does not weak­en our spir­it.”

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety is request­ing that the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment send a naval ves­sel to restore the peace in the waters of the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry. We have 77 crew from 16 nations on three ves­sels, 6 of them were on the Ady Gil. Of these 21 are Aus­tralian cit­i­zens. 16 Aus­tralians on the Steve Irwin and 5 on the Bob Bark­er. Sea Shep­herd believes that the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the lives of Aus­tralian cit­i­zens work­ing to defend whales from ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing activ­i­ties.

“Aus­tralia needs to send a naval ves­sel down here as soon as pos­si­ble to pro­tect both the whales and the Aus­tralian cit­i­zens work­ing to defend these whales.” Said Steve Irwin Chief Cook Lau­ra Dakin of Can­ber­ra. “This is Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters and I see the Japan­ese whalers doing what­ev­er they want with impuni­ty down here with­out a sin­gle Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment ves­sel any­where to be found. Peter Gar­rett, I have one ques­tion for you. Where the bloody hell are you?”

http://www.seashepherd.org

—

Sea Shep­herd vows to con­tin­ue cam­paign after whalers destroy Ady Gil

Yes­ter­day was a hec­tic day in Com­mon­wealth Bay, near Antarc­ti­ca, in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary. The Ady Gil, while sta­tion­ary, was pupose­ful­ly rammed at speed by the Japan­ese whal­ing secu­ri­ty ves­sel, the Shonan Maru 2. And the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet, and the world dis­cov­ered Sea Shep­herds sur­prise new con­ser­va­tion ship, the Bob Bak­er, an ex-Nor­we­gian Antarc­tic ice-class whal­ing ves­sel that was bought in 2009 and secret­ly refit­ted in South Africa.

In the Antarc­tic ear­ly morn­ing twi­light at 0300 Hours, 6 Jan­u­ary, the Bob Bak­er found the Nis­shin Maru and her four har­poon ves­sels. The Japan­ese whal­ing oper­a­tion had been caught unawares. They had been focussing on the loca­tion of the Steve Irwin, pay­ing New Zealan­der Glenn Inwood’s Ome­ka Pub­lic Rela­tions com­pa­ny to hire char­ter flights first in Albany, and then in Mel­bourne and Hobart to locate and fol­low the Steve Irwin.

The ‘spy flights’ from Albany were able to direct the Shonan Maru 2 to shad­ow the Steve Irwin when it left Fre­man­tle so that the main whal­ing fleet could avoid a con­flict and do their whale slaugh­ter in peace. The stra­e­gy worked for two weeks, until the Steve Irwin returned to Hobart to refu­el and repro­vi­sion. Leav­ing Hobart on New Years Eve, the Steve Irwin was able to slip past under­cov­er of a thun­der­storm. The spy flights from Mel­bourne and Hobart organ­ised by Glenn Inwood, esti­mat­ed to cost about $18,000, could not locate the Steve Irwin due to the low cloud cov­er.

The Sea Shep­herd also had some unex­pect­ed assis­tance depart­ing Hobart from six peo­ple on a small motor­boat, self iden­ti­fied as ‘Taz Patrol’, who patrolled the perime­ter of the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone (EEZ) locat­ing the Yushin Maru and twit­ter­ing it’s loca­tion to the world (and Sea Shep­herd).

So with the whal­ing fleet locat­ed, New Zealand skip­per of the Ady Gil, Pete Bethune, drove his power­boat around the Nis­shan Maru whal­ing fac­to­ry ship, attempt­ing to foul the fac­to­ry ship’s pro­pel­lors. Evi­dent­ly only one bauble of rot­ten but­ter reached the deck of the Nis­shan Maru, but the green laser pho­ton­ic dis­rupters were also used. In return the Nis­shan Maru fired up its LRAD acoustic weapon and used its water can­non. Stale­mate.

So the Ady Gil retreats with the Nis­shan Maru flee­ing. Sea Shep­herd’s new ves­sel the Bob Bak­er pre­pares to chase the Nis­shan Maru and the fleet, while most of the Ady Gil crew sit on the roof with the ves­sel in a sta­tion­ary idle. The videos show the Japan­ese har­poon ves­sel, the Shonan Maru 2 charg­ing the Ady Gil with water canons blaz­ing. Peter Bethune tells his crew to pre­pare for a drench­ing, lit­tle real­iz­ing the dan­ger he and his crew were fac­ing. While the water can­non sprays the roof of the Ady Gil blind­ing the crew, the Shonan Maru turns sharply to star­board right at the Ady Gil. In the few moments before impact Peter Bethune guns the Ady Gil, but it is far too late with Shonan Maru 2 slic­ing 2 metres off the bow of the Ady Gil, forc­ing the power­boat momen­tar­i­ly under­wa­ter and immers­ing the crew in the icy waters hold­ing on to the roof for their lives.

Even after impact and seper­a­tion of the ships, the Shonan Maru 2 con­tin­ues to pound the bedrag­gled crew hang­ing on to the top of the Ady Gil with water canon blasts.

Video: Japan­ese Whalers film Ady Gil being rammed by Shonan Maru 2

Video: Ady Gil rammed by Shonan Maru 2 filmed by Sea Shep­herd from Bob Bark­er

—

Rammed Ves­sel Ady Gil Sinks

Sea Shep­herd Resumes Pur­suit of Ille­gal Whalers

On Jan­u­ary 8, 2010 at 17:20 (GMT) the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ves­sel Bob Bark­er report­ed the last known posi­tion of anoth­er Sea Shep­herd ves­sel, the Ady Gil, to the Aus­tralian Res­cue Coor­di­na­tion Cen­ter (ARCC). This report was made because the Ady Gil—which was orig­i­nal­ly going to be towed to a near­by base—is now sink­ing and could pose a nav­i­ga­tion haz­ard for the next two to three hours.

Hav­ing bare­ly sur­vived a vicious attack by the ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing ves­sel Shonan Maru No. 2 on Jan­u­ary 6, 2010, the Ady Gil began tak­ing on water. Since that time, Bob Bark­er crew mem­bers have been work­ing around the clock in an attempt to save the ship and remove pos­si­ble envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards in case the ves­sel had fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions while being towed.

Whalers and Whale Defenders Clash for the First Time This Season

The first clash between whalers and whale defend­ers took place on Decem­ber 14th when the Steve Irwin and the Shonan Maru #2 exchanged shots with their water can­nons.

Sea Shepherd's Steve Irwin & Nisshin Maru playThe first clash between whalers and whale defend­ers took place on Decem­ber 14th when the Steve Irwin and the Shonan Maru #2 exchanged shots with their water can­nons.

The Shonan Maru #2 has been fol­low­ing the Steve Irwin from Fre­man­tle since Decem­ber 9th. At 1400 Hours (Mel­bourne time) the Steve Irwin went around an ice­berg, did a fig­ure eight out of view of the Shonan Maru #2 and re-emerged with­in a quar­ter of a mile of the Japan­ese whaler’s port­side quar­ter catch­ing the whalers com­plete­ly by sur­prise.

A pur­suit began and the Shonan Maru #2 turned on two water can­nons. The crew of the Steve Irwin imme­di­ate­ly respond­ed by plac­ing their water can­non in readi­ness. The Shonan Maru #2 and the Steve Irwin were engaged in a high speed pur­suit for two hours before Cap­tain Wat­son decid­ed to break off the pur­suit to resume course to the coast of Antarc­ti­ca.

The Japan­ese whalers are spend­ing a great deal of mon­ey, first locat­ing the Steve Irwin by air and then direct­ing the Shonan Maru #2 to the coor­di­nates of the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel. By stay­ing on the tail of the Steve Irwin, the har­poon ves­sel is able to keep the rest of the fleet aware of the Sea Shep­herd posi­tion. Cap­tain Paul Wat­son needs to lose the tail of the Shonan Maru #2 in order to locate the whal­ing fleet. He is count­ing on heav­ier ice con­di­tions to assist in this effort.

“We will use the ice­bergs and the ice floes to our advan­tage.” Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I’ve observed today that I am a more expe­ri­enced ice nav­i­ga­tor than the Japan­ese cap­tain chas­ing us. We need to get him to fol­low us into the ice fields and let the ice work for us.”

The Steve Irwin crew were left wet, but in good spir­its after the con­fronta­tion.

—-

Sea Shep­herd Evades Pur­suit by Japan­ese Whal­ing Fleet Secu­ri­ty Ves­sel

The Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin has suc­cess­ful­ly left the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ) with­out any sign of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet secu­ri­ty ship Shonan Maru No. 2.

The Steve Irwin depart­ed from Hobart at 1800 Hours on Decem­ber 31st and took advan­tage of gale force winds and heavy swells to slip past the wait­ing Japan­ese ves­sel.

“It’s a big ocean down here they have no idea where we are,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I’m now con­fi­dent that we can pro­ceed with our search for the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet with­out fur­ther inter­fer­ence from the Shonan Maru No. 2.”

The Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Ady Gil is patrolling the South­ern Ocean in advance of the Steve Irwin in search of the fleet.

The Shonan Maru No. 2 was wait­ing for the Steve Irwin when it left Fre­man­tle on Decem­ber 7th. The Japan­ese had char­tered an air­craft out of Albany to locate the con­ser­va­tion ves­sel. They then relayed the Steve Irwin’s posi­tion to the Shonan Maru No. 2 to enable the Japan­ese secu­ri­ty ves­sel to inter­cept the Steve Irwin.

The Steve Irwin was unable to lose the pur­suit of the Shonan Maru No. 2 for more than two weeks. Only by return­ing to Tas­ma­nia was the tail lost because Japan­ese whal­ing ships are pro­hib­it­ed from enter­ing Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

“Thanks to the stormy weath­er, there was no pos­si­bil­i­ty of a char­tered flight locat­ing the Steve Irwin and we were able to pass back into inter­na­tion­al waters with­out any sign of the Shonan Maru No. 2,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “They will be hard pressed to locate us now and with­out them on our tail, I am con­fi­dent that we will be able to track down the whale poach­ers in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry.”
“It was awe­some see­ing them run like cow­ards when we turned on them,” said Third Mate Vin­cent Hayes from Williamstown in Vic­to­ria.

Support the Eco-Prisoners (December 2009)‏

Spir­it of Free­dom (Decem­ber 2009)
Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Earth Liberation Prisoners logoSpir­it of Free­dom (Decem­ber 2009)
Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the Decem­ber 2009 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. A few months ago ELP report­ed the arrest of the Amer­i­can, Justin Solondz in Chi­na. As peo­ple will be aware Justin is want­ed for ques­tion­ing in con­nec­tion to an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into the ELF that led to the Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton Tri­als.

When ELP first heard of the arrest we wrong­ly believed, like many oth­ers, that Justin would be extra­dit­ed to Amer­i­ca where he would be remand­ed to stand tri­al for his alleged ELF activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, a cou­ple of days ago ELP learnt that rather than extra­dit­ing him, the Chi­nese decid­ed to put Justin on tri­al accused of drugs relat­ed activ­i­ty. Justin was duly found Guilty and sen­tenced to three years impris­on­ment fol­lowed by depor­ta­tion. This is of course very bad news for Justin and if any­one has any con­tact details for Justin (or knows what prison he is held in, in Chi­na, please con­tact ELP as soon as pos­si­ble).

Besides Justin’s impris­on­ment, sad­ly over the past few weeks ELP has learnt about the impris­on­ments of a num­ber of peo­ple across Europe and North Amer­i­ca accused of a vari­ety of activ­i­ty, this includes the impris­on­ment of for­mer Ital­ian ALF pris­on­er Ser­gio Ste­fani who has been accused of steal­ing a car and charged with “sub­ver­sive con­spir­a­cy” and placed in a jail specif­i­cal­ly designed for polit­i­cal activists! ELP encour­ages every­one to write urgent let­ter of sup­port to all of the new pris­on­ers on our list and remind them we are behind them. But also please don’t for­get our exist­ing pris­on­ers. All of the pris­on­ers list­ed below wel­come let­ters of sup­port.
So please, regard­less of what lan­guages you speak and regard­less of where you live in the world, your let­ters of sup­port real­ly do make the world of dif­fer­ence to the pris­on­ers. So please sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

If any­one notices any of ELP’s pris­on­er details is out of date or we do not list a pris­on­er who we should list, please let ELP know as soon as pos­si­ble.
ELP is run by a small group of vol­un­teers and although we try to ensure our lists are accu­rate, we admit we do make mis­takes. So help us help keep the lists accu­rate by let­ting us know of any changes we need to make.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Board­er Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Niall Har­nett, Castlerea Prison, Har­ris­town, Castlerea, Co. Roscom­mon, Repub­lic of Ire­land. Sev­er­ing 4 months for non-pay­ment of a fine. The fine was issued fol­low­ing Mau­ra’s involve­ment in an anti-Shell petrol com­pa­ny protest. (Diet unknown).

Mau­ra Har­ringon, Dochas Cen­tre, Moun­tjoy Gaol, North Cir­cu­lar Road, Dublin 7, Repub­lic of Ire­land. Sev­er­ing 8 months for non-pay­ment of a fine. The fine was issued fol­low­ing Mau­ra’s involve­ment in an anti-Shell petrol com­pa­ny protest. (Diet unknown).

Leonar­do Lan­di, Carcere San­re­mo, Via Armea, 144, 18038 San­re­mo (IM), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of rob­bery. (Leonar­do is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, #04672–061, FCI Wase­ca, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1731, Wase­ca, MN 56093, USA. Serv­ing 21 years and 10 months for her involve­ment in an ELF arson against a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing car­ry­ing out Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied crop tests. Marie also plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to car­ry out ELF actions and admit­ted involve­ment in 12 oth­er ELF actions. (Marie is a veg­an).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097, FCI Vic­torville, Medi­um II, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal
dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, 63794–053, USP Mar­i­on, US Pen­i­ten­tiary, PO Box 1000, Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Steve Mur­phy #39013177 (for his most cur­rent prison address check out the web­site http://supportsteve.org/ ). On remand accused of attempt­ed arson and crim­i­nal dam­age at a town house con­struc­tion site in 2006. The FBI claim the action was done under the ban­ner of the ELF. (Steve is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Justin Solondz (Address Unknown — Chi­na). Amer­i­can Green Scare defen­dant accused of direct action activ­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. Serv­ing 3 years in Chi­na for drugs relat­ed offences then due to be deport­ed back to Amer­i­ca. His exact prison loca­tion is cur­rent­ly unknown. (Diet unknown).

Jonatan Strand­berg, Box 248, 59323, Väster­vik, Swe­den. Serv­ing 15 months impris­on­ment after admit­ting dam­ag­ing a com­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­er used by the Depart­ment of Defence, cut­ting the cables on a crane used in cre­at­ing urban sprawl, and dam­ag­ing a vehi­cle used in the log­ging indus­try. Jonatan is a dia­bet­ic and fol­lows a paleo diet, demand­ing local­ly sourced food).

Michael Sykes 696693, Richard A. Hand­lon Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, 1728 Blue­wa­ter High­way, Ionia, MI 48846, USA. Serv­ing four to ten years for anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age to a util­i­ty pole, spray-paint­ing polit­i­cal graf­fi­ti and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Bri­ana Waters 36432–086, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route 37, Dan­bury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Anony­mous Female Pris­on­er One (E‑mail mes­sages of sup­port to
holland@die-tierbefreier.de ) Ger­man woman held on Remand accused of raid­ing a mink farm in Hol­land. (She is a veg­an).

Anony­mous Female Pris­on­er Two (E‑mail mes­sages of sup­port to
dbf-sg@riseup.net ) Dutch woman held on Remand accused of raid­ing a mink farm in Hol­land. (She is a veg­an).

Jon­ny Able­white TB4885, H.M. Prison, Hewell Lane, Red­ditch, Worcs B97 6QS, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Guys Marsh, Shaftes­bury, Dorset, SP7 0AH, Eng­land. Serv­ing 4 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Cold­in­g­ley, Shaftes­bury Road, Bis­ley, Wok­ing, Sur­rey GU24 9EX, Eng­land. Serv­ing 9 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Send, Rip­ley Road, Wok­ing, Sur­rey, GU23 7LJ, Eng­land. Serv­ing 9 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton A3892AE, HMP Fran­k­land, Bras­side, Durham, Coun­ty Durham DH1 5YD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 10 years for “con­spir­a­cy to com­mit arson” against Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion depart­ment. (Mel is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Alex Hall, Inmate #2009–06304, Davis Coun­ty Jail, 800 West State St., Farm­ing­ton, UT 84025, USA. On Remand accused of raid­ing a mink farm. Also accused of breach­ing bail con­di­tions whilst on bail. (William is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Robert Lewis (address unknown — Eng­land). Serv­ing 18 months for send­ing threat­en­ing let­ters to a com­pa­ny linked to drugs test­ing. (Diet Unknown).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Robert Grif­fiths (address unknown — Eng­land). Serv­ing 18 months for send­ing threat­en­ing let­ters to a com­pa­ny linked to drugs test­ing. (Diet unknown).

Gavin Medd-Hall WV9475, HMP Cold­in­g­ley, Shaftes­bury Road, Bis­ley, Wok­ing, Sur­rey GU24 9EX, Eng­land. Serv­ing 8 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gavin is a veg­an).

Heather Nichol­son VM5859, HMP Fos­ton Hall, Fos­ton, Der­by, Der­byshire, DE65 5DN, Eng­land. Serv­ing 11 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Heather is a veg­an).

Kevin Olliff, #1300931, TTCF 161 D‑Pod, 450 Bauchet St., Los Ange­les, CA 90012, USA. On remand accused of stalk­ing. Exact details of the indict­ment have not yet been revealed but the charges appear to relate to a per­son employed by an edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty so may be linked to vivi­sec­tion. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

Ster­gio Ste­fani — See Oth­er Polit­i­cal Pris­on­er List.

William James Viehl, Inmate #2009–05735, Davis Coun­ty Jail, 800 West State St., Farm­ing­ton, UT 84025, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing plead­ed guilty to raid­ing a mink farm. He is due to be sen­tenced in Decem­ber. (William is a veg­an).

Nicole Vosper VM9385, HMP Bronze­field, Wood­hthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of black­mail­ing Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nicole is a veg­an).

Dan Wad­ham, A5705AA, HMP Camp Hill, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5PB, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

GRAND JURY RESISTERS
The fol­low­ing peo­ple have been jailed for refus­ing to tes­ti­fy before Grand Juries in Amer­i­ca which are inves­ti­gat­ing ALF & ELF activ­i­ty.

Car­olyn Feld­man, Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty Jail., 2185 Lex­ing­ton Blvd. PO Box 6, Wash­ing­ton, IA 52353, USA. (Diet unknown).

Mus­ca­tine Coun­ty Jail Inmate, c/o “Scott DeMuth”, 400 Wal­nut Street, Mus­ca­tine, Iowa 52761, USA. Scott has also recent­ly been indict­ed for con­spir­a­cy under the Ani­mal Enter­prise Ter­ror­ism Act. (Scott is a meat eater who advo­cates bow hunt­ing).

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

OTHER ANTI-WAR PRISONERS

Eli­ja Smith VP 7551 HMP Lewes, 1 Brighton Rd, Lewes, Sus­sex, BN7 1EA, Eng­land. On remand accused of dis­arm­ing a weapons fac­to­ry, which, amongst oth­er things, makes Hell­fire Mis­siles. The action was in protest at Israel mil­i­tary action against Gaza. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE DEFENDANTS
The Lec­ce Defen­dants have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Alek­sey Bychin, FBU OIK‑2 IK‑7 otryad No. 7, ul. Kar­nal­li­to­vaya d. 98, g. Solikam­sk Permskiy Kray, 618545 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 5 years for defend­ing him­self against neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).

Andrei Mergen­ov, FGU IZ 64/1 OKB 2 komn. 73, Up. Kutyako­va 107, 410601 Sara­tov, Rus­sia. Serv­ing 3 years for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown)

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland. Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

OTHER PRISONERS

Pavel Deli­don, ul. Timiryazeva‑1, FGU IK‑7, 309990 Val­uy­ki Rus­sia. Anarchist/Animal Rights activist jailed for attempt­ing to obtain wages owed to him, but which had not been paid to him by his employ­er. IMPORTANT: Pavel can only receive let­ters writ­ten in Russ­ian. He is pun­ished by the prison if he receives a let­ter not writ­ten in Russ­ian so please, only send let­ters writ­ten in Russ­ian. (Diet unknown).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they did­n’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Alessan­dro Set­tepani, Carcere San Michele, Via Casale, 50/A, 15122 San Michele (AL), Italy. Co-defen­dant of Ser­gio Ste­fani. Arrest­ed for steal­ing a car and then remand­ed for “Sub­ver­sive Con­spir­a­cy” and remand­ed into a prison for polit­i­cal activists. (Alessan­dro is a veg­an).

Ser­gio Maria Ste­fani, Carcere San Michele, Via Casale, 50/A, 15122 San Michele (AL), Italy. For­mer ALF pris­on­er arrest­ed for steal­ing a car and then remand­ed for “Sub­ver­sive Con­spir­a­cy” and remand­ed into a prison for polit­i­cal activists. (Ser­gio is a veg­an).

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915, CCC, 3151 Lit­ton Dri­ve, Chill­i­cuthe, MO 64601, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions includ­ing assault and mur­der. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail
elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail
yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Spirit of Freedom Prisoner Listing Oct 2009

Spir­it of Free­dom
(Octo­ber 2009)
Pro­duced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Spir­it of Free­dom
(Octo­ber 2009)
Pro­duced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the Octo­ber 2009 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. Unfor­tu­nate­ly we have to start this newslet­ter with some bad news. Lit­er­al­ly in the last few days ELP has learnt of the jail­ing of two new eco-pris­on­ers, one is Swe­den, one in Amer­i­ca.

Last month Swedish eco-activist, Jonatan Strand­berg was informed that his appeal against the length of his prison sen­tence was unsuc­cess­ful and he was
informed he would be return­ing to prison. We were informed that Jonatan would be return­ing to prison at the start of this week and today we received the depress­ing news that Jonatan is now in prison.

ELP has been proud to know Jonatan for a few months now (ever since his first arrest) and we have always admired the way he has remained true to his beliefs and tak­en a very accept­ing view of the fact he might have to return to prison. How­ev­er despite his own dif­fi­cul­ties Jonatan has also worked hard for pris­on­er sup­port, writ­ing to new pris­on­ers and encour­ag­ing those who found them­selves behind bars to stay focussed on the pos­i­tive.

In the same way Jonatan has helped the pris­on­ers whilst he was on the out­side it is now our turn to help Jonatan and we very much hope peo­ple will send him let­ters of sup­port.

Besides Jonatan’s impris­on­ment, ELP has also learnt of the jail­ing of an Amer­i­can envi­ron­men­tal­ist, Stephen Mur­phy, who is accused of involve­ment in an attempt­ed arson on a town house con­struc­tion site in 2006. The day after the attempt­ed arson con­struc­tion work­ers dis­cov­ered that at least one of their con­struc­tion vehi­cles had been van­dalised and ELF slo­gans writ­ten on it. Stephen is cur­rent­ly held in Texas but is expect­ed to be trans­ferred to Los Ange­les in the next few weeks where the alleged attempt­ed arson occurred.

Also, with regards to new pris­on­ers, British ani­mal rights activist, Dean Cain, has been returned to prison fol­low­ing the breach­ing of his parole con­di­tions. Dean was on parole for his involve­ment in activ­i­ties at a rab­bit farm which breeds rab­bits for vivi­sec­tion.

ELP has also learnt that Amer­i­can ani­mal rights activist, Jor­dan Hal­l­i­day, who recent­ly served time in prison for refus­ing to tes­ti­fy before a Grand Jury, has been indict­ed on con­tempt charges and there­fore may soon return to prison again. His tri­al is due to start in Novem­ber 2009.

Also, as a num­ber of ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, ear­li­er this month the long-term Amer­i­can envi­ron­men­tal pris­on­er, Jeff ‘Free’ Leurs was released from prison. This took every­one by sur­prise, not least Free. How­ev­er his release proved to be an admin­is­tra­tion error and he was quick­ly returned to prison. ELP is dis­gust­ed that Free has been returned to prison, espe­cial­ly as he is due for release in a cou­ple of months any­way, and we feel that his treat­ment is noth­ing but psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture.

Oth­er pris­on­er news, the British ani­mal rights pris­on­er John Smith has asked to have his name removed from all pris­on­er sup­port lists.

But hap­pi­ly ELP does have some pos­i­tive news amongst all the neg­a­tive news. British ani­mal rights activist, Sean Kirt­ley, who was jailed for run­ning a LEGAL cam­paign group which protest­ed against vivi­sec­tion, has been released from prison. This is fan­tas­tic news and ELP wish­es Sean all the best for the future.

And on that note, we shall end this edi­to­r­i­al news update. But before we go we shall repeat what we always say — All of the pris­on­ers list­ed below wel­come let­ters of sup­port. Regard­less of what lan­guages you speak, regard­less of where you live in the world, your let­ters of sup­port real­ly do make the world of dif­fer­ence to the pris­on­ers. So please sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

If any­one notices any of ELP’s pris­on­er details is out of date or we do not list a pris­on­er who we should list, please let ELP know as soon as pos­si­ble.
ELP is run by a small group of vol­un­teers and although we try to ensure our lists are accu­rate, we admit we do make mis­takes. So help us help keep the lists accu­rate by let­ting us know of any changes we need to make.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Bor­der Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Daniele Casali­ni, Via Casale 50/a, 15040 San Michele (AL), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of rob­bery to fund a sub­ver­sive organ­i­sa­tion. (Daniele is a veg­an).

Francesco Gioia, Via Casale 50/a, 15040 San Michele (AL), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of rob­bery to fund a sub­ver­sive organ­i­sa­tion. (Francesco is a veg­e­tar­i­an and Straight Edge).

Niall Har­nett, Castlerea Prison, Har­ris­town, Castlerea, Co. Roscom­mon, Repub­lic of Ire­land. Sev­er­ing 4 months for non-pay­ment of a fine. The fine was issued fol­low­ing Mau­ra’s involve­ment in an anti-Shell petrol com­pa­ny protest. (Diet unknown).

Mau­ra Har­ringon, Dochas Cen­tre, Moun­tjoy Gaol, North Cir­cu­lar Road, Dublin 7, Repub­lic of Ire­land. Serv­ing 8 months for non-pay­ment of a fine. The fine was issued fol­low­ing Mau­ra’s involve­ment in an anti-Shell petrol com­pa­ny protest. (Diet unknown).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, #04672–061, FCI Wase­ca, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1731, Wase­ca, MN 56093, USA. Serv­ing 21 years and 10 months for her involve­ment in an ELF arson against a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing car­ry­ing out Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied crop tests. Marie also plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to car­ry out ELF actions and admit­ted involve­ment in 12 oth­er ELF actions. (Marie is a veg­an).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097, FCI Vic­torville, Medi­um II, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, 63794–053, USP Mar­i­on, US Pen­i­ten­tiary, PO Box 1000, Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Steve Mur­phy #39013177 FCI Fort Worth, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 15330, Fort Worth, TX 76119, USA. On remand accused of attempt­ed arson and crim­i­nal dam­age at a town house con­struc­tion site in 2006. The FBI claim the action was done under the ban­ner of the ELF. (Diet unknown).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Justin Solondz (Address Unknown). Amer­i­can Green Scare defen­dant accused of direct action activ­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. Arrest­ed in Chi­na. Exact loca­tion cur­rent­ly unknown. (Diet unknown).

Jonatan Strand­berg, Box 248, 59323, Väster­vik, Swe­den. Serv­ing 15 months impris­on­ment after admit­ting dam­ag­ing a com­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­er used by the Depart­ment of Defence, cut­ting the cables on a crane used in cre­at­ing urban sprawl, and dam­ag­ing a vehi­cle used in the log­ging indus­try. (Jonatan is a dia­bet­ic and fol­lows a paleo diet, demand­ing local­ly sourced food).

Michael Sykes 696693, Richard A. Hand­lon Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, 1728 Blue­wa­ter High­way, Ionia, MI 48846, USA. Serv­ing four to ten years for anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age to a util­i­ty pole, spray-paint­ing polit­i­cal graf­fi­ti and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Bri­ana Waters 36432–086, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route 37, Dan­bury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Jon­ny Able­white TB4885, H.M. Prison, Hewell Lane, Red­ditch, Worcs B97 6QS, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Guys Marsh, Shaftes­bury, Dorset, SP7 0AH, Eng­land.
Serv­ing 4 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Cold­in­g­ley, Shaftes­bury Road, Bis­ley, Wok­ing, Sur­rey GU24 9EX, Eng­land. Serv­ing 9 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Send, Rip­ley Road, Wok­ing, Sur­rey, GU23 7LJ, Eng­land. Serv­ing 9 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Fran­k­land, Bras­side, Durham, Coun­ty Durham DH1 5YD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 10 years for “con­spir­a­cy to com­mit arson” against Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion depart­ment. (Mel is a veg­an).

Dean Cain WJ 4309, HMP Pre­ston, 2 Rib­ble­ton Lane, Lan­cashire, PR1 5AB, Eng­land. Jailed for breach­ing his parole con­di­tions, whilst on parole for his involve­ment in a raid on a rab­bit farm which breeds rab­bits for vivi­sec­tion. (Dean is a veg­an).

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Ter­mi­nal Island, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 3007, San Pedro, CA 90731, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Jake is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Alex Hall, Inmate #2009–06304, Davis Coun­ty Jail, 800 West State St., Farm­ing­ton, UT 84025, USA. On Remand accused of raid­ing a mink farm. Also accused of breach­ing bail con­di­tions whilst on bail. (William is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Gavin Medd-Hall WV9475, HMP Cold­in­g­ley, Shaftes­bury Road, Bis­ley, Wok­ing, Sur­rey GU24 9EX, Eng­land. Serv­ing 8 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gavin is a veg­an).

Heather Nichol­son VM5859, HMP Fos­ton Hall, Fos­ton, Der­by, Der­byshire, DE65 5DN, Eng­land. Serv­ing 11 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Heather is a veg­an).

Kevin Olliff, #1300931, TTCF 161 D‑Pod, 450 Bauchet St., Los Ange­les, CA 90012, USA. On remand accused of stalk­ing. Exact details of the indict­ment have not yet been revealed but the charges appear to relate to a per­son employed by an edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty so may be linked to vivi­sec­tion. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

William James Viehl, Inmate #2009–05735, Davis Coun­ty Jail, 800 West State St., Farm­ing­ton, UT 84025, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing plead­ed guilty to raid­ing a mink farm. He is due to be sen­tenced in Novem­ber. (William is a veg­an).

Nicole Vosper VM9385, HMP Bronze­field, Wood­hthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of black­mail­ing Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nicole is a veg­an).

Dan Wad­ham, A5705AA, HMP Camp Hill, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5PB, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5 years for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

OTHER ANTI-WAR PRISONERS

Eli­ja Smith VP 7551 HMP Lewes, 1 Brighton Rd, Lewes, Sus­sex, BN7 1EA, Eng­land. On remand accused of dis­arm­ing a weapons fac­to­ry, which, amongst oth­er things, makes Hell­fire Mis­siles. The action was in protest at Israel mil­i­tary action against Gaza. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE DEFENDANTS
The Lec­ce Defen­dants have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Alek­sey Bychin, SIZO 47/2, ul. Akademi­ka Lebe­de­va, dom. 39, 195005 St. Peter­burg, Rus­sia. Serv­ing 5 years for defend­ing him­self against neo-nazis.
(Diet unknown).

Andrei Mergen­ov, FGU IZ 64/1 OKB 2 komn. 73, Up. Kutyako­va 107, 410601 Sara­tov, Rus­sia. Serv­ing 3 years for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown)

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties. (Diet unknown).

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

OTHER PRISONERS

Pavel Deli­don, ul. Timiryazeva‑1, FGU IK‑7, 309990 Val­uy­ki Rus­sia.
Anarchist/Animal Rights activist jailed for attempt­ing to obtain wages owed to him, but which had not been paid to him by his employ­er. IMPORTANT: Pavel can only receive let­ters writ­ten in Russ­ian. He is pun­ished by the prison if he receives a let­ter not writ­ten in Russ­ian so please, only send let­ters writ­ten in Russ­ian. (Diet unknown).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they did­n’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915, CCC, 3151 Lit­ton Dri­ve, Chill­i­cuthe, MO 64601, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions includ­ing assault and mur­der. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

http://www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk/

EARTH FIRST! WINTER MOOT: 5th — 7th Feb 2010, County Durham — exact location released, & other info (incl. for cyclists)

EARTH FIRST! WINTER MOOT
6pm Fri 5th — Sun 7th Feb 2010
North-east Eng­land

“A week­end of net­work­ing, reflec­tion, strate­gic dis­cus­sions & cam­paign plan­ning for any­one involved in eco­log­i­cal direct action who believes in non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion and direct­ly con­fronting the forces respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants”

EF! earth fist logoEARTH FIRST! WINTER MOOT
6pm Fri 5th — Sun 7th Feb 2010
North-east Eng­land

“A week­end of net­work­ing, reflec­tion, strate­gic dis­cus­sions & cam­paign plan­ning for any­one involved in eco­log­i­cal direct action who believes in non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion and direct­ly con­fronting the forces respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants”

Venue:
The Win­ter Moot will be tak­ing place at the Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Front Street (A692), Dip­ton, Stan­ley, Coun­ty Durham, DH9 9DR. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on get­ting there can be found via the How to get there link (now includ­ing cycling direc­tions).

New poster to down­load
New fly­er to down­load

Details of EF! Win­ter Moot announced:

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the UK eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. Earth First! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. We believe we can make a real dif­fer­ence by doing it our­selves rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try.

This years Earth First! Win­ter Moot will be tak­ing place in Co. Durham on the week­end of 6/7th Feb­ru­ary. As well as eval­u­a­tions and updates from a num­ber of eco­log­i­cal cam­paigns from around the coun­try, this year we will have a themed event — The Cri­sis: eval­u­a­tion, analy­sis and pos­si­ble respons­es. We will be explor­ing the inter­ac­tions between the var­i­ous eco­log­i­cal, finan­cial and resource crises, exam­in­ing our own con­cep­tions and expe­ri­ences of cri­sis, then tying it alto­geth­er to find a way for­ward using non-hier­ar­chi­cal approach­es.

We will also be host­ing a dis­cus­sion on how Earth First and the Camp for Cli­mate Action inter­sect, to deal with quite a num­ber of issues that emerged at the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, includ­ing issues of gen­er­a­tional under­stand­ing, anar­chism vs. lib­er­al­ism, are we seper­ate net­works, and how can we go for­ward togeth­er in the future. This debate will be tak­ing from 6.15–7.30pm on the Sat­ur­day evening of the Moot, and is open to all.

Every­one wel­come

If your cam­paign (local or nation­al) is inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the feed­back please get in touch.

The venue will be acces­si­ble, and par­ent-friend­ly. Veg­an food pro­vid­ed. Sug­gest­ed dona­tion for the week­end is £20. The venue will be announced one week before­hand so keep an eye on the web­site for details; how­ev­er, for those who want to pur­chase advance tick­ets, the near­est sta­tion will be New­cas­tle-upon-Tyne.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it http://earthfirst.org.uk/ & http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/2010moot/front.html
Tel: 0777 114 2131

1. It is in doors with com­mu­nal sleep­ing areas (no camp­ing — we’re not that mad 🙂 )

2. The actu­al venue will be announced a week before hand, so please check the web­site then, or email us.

For enquiries, offers of facil­i­ta­tion & help, ideas for work­shops and TO LET US KNOW YOU ARE COMING! email : wintermoot@earthfirst.org.uk

More about the Moot
The EF! Win­ter Moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the UK eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future.

Fol­low­ing a pop­u­lar dis­cus­sion at 2009’s EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing 2010’s Moot also aims to hold dis­cus­sions on the theme of “ready­ing our­selves for unpre­dictabil­i­ty and insta­bil­i­ty in the UK and glob­al­ly”. The cur­rent & impend­ing crises of eco­nom­ics, ecol­o­gy, ener­gy & soci­ety fun­da­men­tal­ly alter the ter­rain of strug­gle; this in turn impacts both the prac­tice and pos­si­bil­i­ties for a rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal move­ment.

2010’s Win­ter Moot is to be held in Coun­ty Durham, an area with a large num­ber of open­cast coal mines, both active and at the appli­ca­tion stage. The week­end will include oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet with activists involved local­ly in cam­paigns against these.

Cost includ­ing veg­an food & crash-pad accom­mo­da­tion £20-£30 (depend­ing what you can afford-but please don’t blag-even the organ­is­ers will pay).

If you have par­tic­u­lar accom­mo­da­tion, access or dietary needs or are bring­ing chil­dren it would help us to know as soon as pos­si­ble so we can plan suit­able facil­i­ties; who­ev­er you are please do try & drop us an email at least a week in advance so we can gauge how many to cater for.

www.earthfirst.org.uk