Three more megaload protesters arrested in Cd’A in USA

28.8.11

Three more pro­test­ers were arrest­ed ear­ly Sat­ur­day in Coeur d’Alene as a mega­load ship­ment of oil exca­va­tion equip­ment passed through the Lake City.

Law enforce­ment offi­cers con­firmed that the arrests were made by Ida­ho State Police, but the names were not released.

28.8.11

Three more pro­test­ers were arrest­ed ear­ly Sat­ur­day in Coeur d’Alene as a mega­load ship­ment of oil exca­va­tion equip­ment passed through the Lake City.

Law enforce­ment offi­cers con­firmed that the arrests were made by Ida­ho State Police, but the names were not released.

One woman tak­en into cus­tody had refused to iden­ti­fy her­self, offi­cials said.

The Coeur d’Alene arrests bring to nine the num­ber of per­sons tak­en into cus­tody in North Ida­ho since the 208-foot-long mega­load left the Port of Lewis­ton on Wednes­day night.

Its per­mit allowed night­time trav­el, accord­ing to the Ida­ho Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment.

Six pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed in Moscow ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing, accord­ing to the Moscow-Pull­man Dai­ly News, which cit­ed court records.

Tier­ra Lin­da, a spokes­woman for the pro­tes­tors, said that con­cerned res­i­dents from North Ida­ho and East­ern Wash­ing­ton con­verged on U.S. High­way 95 when the mega­load ship­ment arrived about 12:30 a.m.

Accord­ing to Ida­ho Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment, the load was sched­uled to leave the Latah/Benewah coun­ty line at 10 p.m. on Fri­day and trav­el through Coeur d’Alene, stop­ping by 5:30 a.m. at a pull­out on Inter­state 90 at mile­post 33.

The load is 413,000 pounds and mea­sures 24 feet in width and 14 feet in height. It was to trav­el at 35 mph. The plan called for allow­ing vehi­cles to pass at more than two dozen loca­tions on the route through North Ida­ho.

Lin­da described the protest as a “non­vi­o­lent pub­lic wit­ness to chal­lenge the ship­ment of Exxon­Mo­bil tar sands strip min­ing equip­ment to Canada’s threat­ened Athabas­ca Riv­er Val­ley.”

She said the peo­ple arrest­ed in Coeur d’Alene were legal­ly fol­low­ing the Exxon­Mo­bil con­voy to mon­i­tor any safe­ty vio­la­tions and did not obstruct the equip­ment.

She described them as observers who were exer­cis­ing their right to dis­sent.

Lin­da said that despite the arrests, the pro­tes­tors planned to con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing the mega­loads.

Envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns stem from the destruc­tive nature of strip min­ing and the use of ener­gy to extract oil from the tar sands.

She said it would cre­ate an “Appalachi­an moon­scape over cen­tral Canada’s bore­al forests and riv­er val­leys.

Lin­da, in a news release, quot­ed a NASA sci­en­tist as say­ing the tar sands min­ing could be a tip­ping point for glob­al cli­mate change.

In Latah Coun­ty, court records iden­ti­fied the pro­tes­tors arrest­ed in Moscow as Vin­cent Mur­ray, 61; Brett Haver­stick, 38; Mitchell Day, 40; David Willard, 52; Gre­go­ry Freis­tadt, 26; and William French, 55.

They were all charged with mis­de­meanor unlaw­ful assem­bly, dis­turb­ing the peace and refusal to dis­perse.

French was also cit­ed by the Latah Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office for mali­cious injury to prop­er­ty for alleged­ly break­ing out the side win­dow of the jail van, said Latah Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor Bill Thomp­son.