Posted on 12/23/2008 9:18:01 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
London, England (AHN) - The Winchester Crown Court found on Monday four rights activists guilty of blackmailing animal testing firms which supplied Huntingdon Life Sciences. Huntingdon, based in Cambridge, conducts animal testing for U.K. pharmaceutical industry.
The four are members of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. Five SHAC members were charged of blackmailing, but only Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham, Gavin Medd-Hall and Heather Nicholson were declared guilty. The fifth accused, Trevor Holmes, was cleared of the charges.
They all denied conspiracy to blackmail which included threats such as claiming the managers of the animal testing companies were pedophiles, sending fake bomb packages and making threatening phone calls to pressure the firms into severing business ties with Huntingdon. Their orchestrated attacks were made from 2001 to 2007.
Selby, Wadham and Medd-Hall were released after posting conditional bail, while Nicholson remained in police custody. Three others - Gregg Avery, Natasha Avery and Daniel Amos - pleaded guilt to conspiracy to blackmail.
The sentencing of the four is slated for Jan. 19 at Winchester Crown Court.
I thought it was only blackmail if the charges are TRUE.
If the charges are NOT true, isn’t it extortion?
Maybe it’s different in the UK?
I don’t know. Maybe they are “legally” the same thing; but I thought there was a subtle difference.
To people without a moral compass such as these thugs, any sort of "means" -- even extortion and blackmail -- justify the "ends."
Sadly, since this happened in Britain, they'll probably get a slap on the wrist, which will simply reinforce such tactics.
It's galling.
It would be wonderful if these idiots had all the answers to cure illness without using animals. These researchers and scientists dedicate their lives to saving ours and I wish the governments of this world would protect them in more substantial ways. I don’t think the Chinese government would allow its scientists to be harassed.
I remember going to a scientific conference a few years ago, which was held in a gorgeous hotel in Nashville. A group of us were having lunch and discussing our research, when one of the ladies sitting at our table mentioned that she’d had dinner with a group of British scientists. “They didn’t talk about their research,” she said. “They acted shocked that we talk so openly about ours. In Britain, scientists talking about their work in public have been attacked with baseball bats.”
We do have a serious problem with eco/animal rights terrorists in the US, but it is not nearly as bad as the problem in Britain.
too bad we cant use these idiots as test subjects
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