Five protesters arrested at RAF Fairford on the eve of the Iraq war start<\/p>\n
their bid to win a landmark ruling at the appeal court today. Clare Dyer<\/p>\n
explains<\/p>\n
Clare Dyer<\/p>\n
Tuesday June 29, 2004<\/p>\n
The Guardian<\/p>\n
It was just after seven on the night of March 13 2003 when Margaret Jones<\/p>\n
and Paul Milling saw the helicopter fly over RAF Fairford. From their<\/p>\n
reconnoitres of the base, they knew that meant the coast was clear. There<\/p>\n
were rumblings of war, and massed ranks of US B-52 bombers stood ready<\/p>\n
to take off for Iraq once the word came through. Though the two peace<\/p>\n
activists didn’t know it then, the US and Britain were to launch their<\/p>\n
armed strike on Iraq just one week later.<\/p>\n
Jones, 55, a former university lecturer in American literature from Bristol,<\/p>\n
and Milling, 57, a handyman from Birmingham who now lives in the Lake<\/p>\n
District, are members of the peace group Trident Ploughshares. They met<\/p>\n
at a protest at Fairford, but with war looming they felt they had to<\/p>\n
do more than just wave banners and march. They decided to try to disable<\/p>\n
the tankers used for refuelling the planes and the trailers that transported<\/p>\n
the bombs for loading on to the bombers.<\/p>\n
“The obvious thing would be to disable a plane. But if you do a plane<\/p>\n
it’s one plane and there are 14 of them,” explains Jones. “But if you<\/p>\n
do the support system, you have the potential capacity to ground the<\/p>\n
whole fleet for quite a while. We thought, if they haven’t got fuel on<\/p>\n
the planes yet and they haven’t got the bombs on, they’re not going anywhere<\/p>\n
till they’ve sorted out those two jobs.”<\/p>\n
A full moon lit their way as they slipped down a back road and slit the<\/p>\n
chain-link fence with bolt cutters. They were in the bomb compound full<\/p>\n
of low loaders and trailers used for transporting the bombs to the planes.<\/p>\n
“We put sand in a couple of petrol tanks and cut the brake pipes on as<\/p>\n
many low loaders as we could reach.” At one point, when they were under<\/p>\n
the low loaders, “we heard American voices and a pair of legs in camouflage<\/p>\n
appeared. We waited for a face to come down and find us”. But the men<\/p>\n
went away. “We put labels on some of the vehicles saying ‘out of order’,<\/p>\n
‘illegal activity’, ‘do not use’, so nobody would have an accident.”<\/p>\n
Crossing the road and deploying their bolt cutters again, they entered<\/p>\n
the main airfield. “We went into a fuel compound where we found three<\/p>\n
big fuel tankers. The first cab we tried swung open and there was a key<\/p>\n
in the ignition. We took a hammer and smashed all the windows and the<\/p>\n
dials on the cab. Having smashed all this glass, we thought surely now<\/p>\n
somebody would come and arrest us but nobody came. We worked very thoroughly<\/p>\n
through the other two vehicles.<\/p>\n
“Just then a long shadow fell and a young American soldier came round<\/p>\n
the corner and looked absolutely horrified. I felt more for that guy<\/p>\n
than for me because he look absolutely freaked. He had a gun but he pointed<\/p>\n
it at the ground the whole time.”<\/p>\n
The US military put the cost of their night’s work at more than \u00c2\u00a380,000.<\/p>\n
Milling and Jones now face trial on charges of criminal damage, which<\/p>\n
could put them in jail for up to 10 years. With a trial looming, both<\/p>\n
media and defendants are usually circumspect about what they say for<\/p>\n
fear of prejudicing the outcome. But unlike most defendants pleading<\/p>\n
not guilty to serious criminal charges, Milling and Jones readily admit<\/p>\n
what they did. They argue, however, that they have a defence which could<\/p>\n
allow a jury to acquit them – that they were trying to prevent an illegal<\/p>\n
war.<\/p>\n
In a hearing which starts today in the court of appeal, three judges<\/p>\n
will decide how far that defence is open to them and to three other peace<\/p>\n
activists who also breached, or tried to breach, the fences at Fairford<\/p>\n
in the lead-up to the war. Toby Olditch and Philip Pritchard broke into<\/p>\n
Fairford on March 18, and in a separate initiative Josh Richards was<\/p>\n
arrested on the same day trying to enter the base. Pritchard, 33, and<\/p>\n
Olditch, 35, both from Oxford, who tried to ground bombers, are charged<\/p>\n
with conspiring to cause criminal damage and possessing articles, including<\/p>\n
bolt cutters and glue, with intent to destroy or damage property.<\/p>\n
Richards, 30, of Bristol, was caught trying to get into the base with<\/p>\n
pliers, cigarette lighters and containers of petrol mixed with detergent.<\/p>\n
He faces charges of attempted arson, criminal damage to the fence, and<\/p>\n
having articles with him which he intended to use to damage or destroy<\/p>\n
property.<\/p>\n
The five face three separate trials but all deny the charges and are<\/p>\n
putting forward the same defences. Last month a high court judge, Mr<\/p>\n
Justice Grigson, ruled that the courts are barred from inquiring into<\/p>\n
the legality of the war. Matters of defence and foreign policy, including<\/p>\n
decisions to launch a war, are covered by crown prerogative and cannot<\/p>\n
be questioned in a court of law, he said.<\/p>\n
But in an unprecedented ruling, the judge held that while foreign policy<\/p>\n
cannot be examined in court, the “secondary effects” of the policy can.<\/p>\n
So the five would be entitled to mount a defence on the basis that they<\/p>\n
were acting to prevent the commission of war crimes as set out in the<\/p>\n
International Criminal Court Act 2001. The act does not make the waging<\/p>\n
of war a crime, but categorises certain specific acts committed abroad<\/p>\n
as offences triable in the UK courts. These acts include attacking or<\/p>\n
bombing undefended buildings which are not military objectives, or<\/p>\n
destroying<\/p>\n
enemy property where this is not demanded by the necessities of war.<\/p>\n
The five want to raise three standard defences to criminal charges –<\/p>\n
two applicable to any crime and the third only to charges of criminal<\/p>\n
damage – which entitle a jury, if it accepts that any of them applied<\/p>\n
to the circumstances of the defendants’ actions, to acquit them of what<\/p>\n
would otherwise be a crime. The judge ruled that these three defences<\/p>\n
could, in principle, be put before the juries at their trials. The first<\/p>\n
defence is that they were acting through necessity to prevent death or<\/p>\n
serious injury – that they reasonably believed Iraqis would be killed<\/p>\n
or seriously injured and that they acted reasonably and proportionately<\/p>\n
to try to prevent it, even though their actions were themselves a crime.<\/p>\n
The second is that they were trying to prevent a crime, a defence allowed<\/p>\n
under the Criminal Law Act 1967. They say that the manner in which force<\/p>\n
was to be used in Iraq amounted to a war crime.<\/p>\n
The third defence is “lawful excuse”, which applies only to cases of<\/p>\n
criminal damage. This is available where a defendant believes his actions<\/p>\n
were reasonable to prevent danger to property – in this case, the property<\/p>\n
of the Iraqi people who were about to be bombed.<\/p>\n
Both prosecution and defence are appealing against the judgment. The<\/p>\n
defence hopes to overturn the ruling barring any inquiry into the legality<\/p>\n
of the war. The crime of “aggression”, defence lawyers argue, is an offence<\/p>\n
contrary to international and domestic law, which the five were trying<\/p>\n
to prevent. The prosecution, on the other hand, argues that the defences<\/p>\n
of necessity and lawful excuse are not available where action is taken<\/p>\n
to prevent the use of force in a foreign country in the exercise of a<\/p>\n
crown prerogative which is not itself challengeable in the UK courts.<\/p>\n
So far the courts have refused all attempts to persuade them to pronounce<\/p>\n
on the legality of the war against Iraq. The Campaign for Nuclear<\/p>\n
Disarmament<\/p>\n
went to the high court in December 2002 to argue that a fresh UN resolution<\/p>\n
was required before war could be launched on Iraq, but the judges decided<\/p>\n
they had no power to interpret a UN resolution.<\/p>\n
Whether the war was lawful or unlawful is not an issue that will trouble<\/p>\n
the judges hearing today’s appeal either. They will simply have to decide<\/p>\n
which defences the law allows the Fairford Five to put forward. Once<\/p>\n
the trial starts and the evidence is heard, it will still be open to<\/p>\n
the trial judge to exclude a particular defence on the evidence.<\/p>\n
Nor will the 36 jurors in the three trials have to make up their minds<\/p>\n
on the war’s legality when the time comes for their deliberations. Their<\/p>\n
task will be to decide what the defendants believed at the time, whether<\/p>\n
their belief was reasonable, and whether their response was reasonable<\/p>\n
and proportionate. And, since juries’ views are secret, we will never<\/p>\n
know the reasons for the verdicts they eventually give.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five protesters arrested at RAF Fairford on the eve of the Iraq war start their bid to win a landmark ruling at the appeal court today. Clare Dyer explains Clare Dyer Tuesday June 29, 2004 The Guardian It was just … Continue reading