10th March 2006

ASSAULT POLICE CHARGES AGAINST PEACE ACTIVISTS DROPPED

Charges against eight activists (charged with a range of public order offences) were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service yesterday afternoon (THURS 10th Mar). The eight were arrested on May 31st during a demonstration outside Brighton arms dealers EDO MBM. Three, including a solicitor, were charged with ‘assault PC’, which regularly carries a prison sentence. The others, including an eighty-year-old man were charged with resist/obstruct PC and obstruction of the highway. The CPS explained that prosecution ‘was not in the public interest’.

Campaigners expressed relief, Chris Osmond, charged with 'assault PC' said “We’ve had this hanging over our heads for over a year now, the fact that all the charges have been dropped suggests that the police always knew that they had a very weak case-the police’s own film shows them lining up in formation preparing to attack people. This was a deliberate and provocative attack on a peaceful demonstration and if it hadn’t been for the amazing work of our legal team some of us would have been imprisoned".

This case follows the dropping of charges against three activists who conducted a weapons inspection at the factory in March last year. They were charged with holding an illegal assembly but charges were dropped mid-trial on February 9th when the judge ordered disclosure of unused evidence. The same evidence would also have been disclosed in any trial of those eight arrested on May 31st.

Four other activists were recently acquitted on appeal after being charged with ‘aggravated trespass’ following a roof-top demo. This brings the number of failed prosecutions of protesters at EDO MBM to 22. Smash Edo press spokesman Andrew Beckett said “We always maintained that the police’s actions on May 31st 2005 were violent and undemocratic - their willingness to drop such serious charges after a year raises serious questions about what evidence the police are so worried about being heard in open court. Does it concern the police’s interaction with EDO MBM and EDO MBM’s solicitor Timothy Lawson Cruttenden? Were arrests of prominent activists named on the injunction made ‘to order’ to bolster EDO MBM’s attempt to create an exclusion zone around the factory in the civil courts?”

SMASH EDO will return the factory for a Citizen’s Weapons Inspection on March 21st. Meet at the bottom of Home Farm Road Brighton at 4pm. To see two short independent films about the campaign go to http://www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies

Notes for Journalists

Brighton & Hove is a UN Peace Messenger City

The injunction referred to was served under the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act (originally designed to protect women from stalkers) and is the first of its kind directed at activists outside of the animal rights movement. Crucially it is a civil injunction but carries criminal penalties. It affects anyone deemed to be a protestor. Initially EDO/MBM requested a large "exclusion zone" comprising the whole of Home Farm Industrial Estate.

They and Sussex police also wanted to limit demonstrations to two and a half hours, with less thanten people who had to be silent. Judge Gross refusedto impose these conditions at the initial hearing of an interim injunction, which was put in place in the period before the full trial to be heard at the High court in London from November 21st. In his summing up he said, "The right to freedom of _expression is jealously guarded in English law" and consequently refused to impose the requested limits on size, timing or noise made at demonstrations. He also said that he doubted that protesters were 'stalking' employees of EDO MBM.

EDO MBM Technologies Ltd are the sole UK subsidiary of huge U.S arms conglomerate EDO Corp, which was recently named No. 10 in the Forbes list of 100 fastest growing companies. They supply bomb release mechanisms to the US and UK armed forces amongstothers. They supply crucial components for Raytheon's Paveway guided bomb system, widely used in the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq.

EDO also withdrew a threatened libel action against Indymedia over being named as "warmongers".

Lawson-Cruttenden & Co
Solicitors firm working for EDO have been instrumental in developing the Protection of Harassment Act 1997 from a measure designed to safeguard individuals to a corporate charter to make inconvenient protest illegal. Theyhave pioneered to use of injunctions to create large "exclusion zones". They have secured numerous injunctions against anti-vivisection and anti-GM protestors.

Campaign against EDO MBM
People involved in the anti-EDO campaign include, but are not limited to: local residents, the Brighton Quakers, peace activists, anti-capitalists, Palestine Solidarity groups, human rights groups, trade unionists, academics and students. The campaign started in August 2004 with a peace camp. It's avowed aim is to expose EDO MBM and their complicity in war crimes and to remove them from Brighton.

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