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LYONS — Adam Durand was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail for trespassing on Wegmans’ Wolcott egg farm while he and other animal rights activists filmed conditions there in 2004. Durand was immediately taken to the Wayne County Jail, but his attorney, who called the sentence excessive, said he may appeal. Judge Dennis Kehoe, who called Durand the mastermind of a blatant and carefully orchestrated crime, fined him $1,500 yesterday and also sentenced him to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service. “You entered your victim’s hen house without permission,” Kehoe told Durand. “You did this...

Who is a terrorist? After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, it was clean-cut Timothy McVeigh, a brooding loner — infused with hatred of the government — who was convicted and put to death for that crime.

Grand Junction, Colo. (AP) -- At least three crude bombs exploded and two others were disarmed Friday outside homes in western Colorado. No injuries were reported, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Authorities were focusing on "two people of interest" as officers continued searching for clues, said Police Sgt. Paul Quimby. "We are concerned there are others out there that no one has discovered yet," he said. The bombs were described as black, office-style trash cans covered in silver duct tape. One explosion scorched the front of a garage door and melted vinyl siding. . . . The...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal grand jury in Eugene on Thursday indicted two more people in the 2001 arson at a Clatskanie tree farm, court officials said, bringing the number charged in the case to six. In all 14 people are charged in what government prosecutors describe as an arson conspiracy across several Western states over five years. Nathan Frazer Block, 24, and Joyanna L. Zacher, 28, were arrested Thursday in Olympia, Wash., after the 14-count indictments were handed up. Advertisement Government attorneys will seek their return to Eugene to face trial, said Karin Immergut, U.S. Attorney for Oregon....

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A radical environmental activist has been indicted by a federal grand jury for demonstrating how to build a firebomb in a speech just 15 hours after a fire that his group claimed responsibility for destroyed a large apartment complex being built nearby. Rodney Adam Coronado, a 39-year-old member of the Earth Liberation Front, was indicted on a charge of giving instructions on how to build a destructive device, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday. The law under which he was charged has been used just...

Feds arrest environment radical over S.D. speech By Onell R. Soto UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER February 23, 2006 Federal agents arrested a radical environmentalist yesterday who practically dared prosecutors to charge him over a speech he gave in Hillcrest as a University City housing complex smoldered from an arson 2½ years ago. Rodney Coronado, 39, of Tucson was indicted in San Diego on charges of demonstrating how to make a destructive device with the intent that the information be used to commit arson. Coronado is a national leader for the Earth Liberation Front, said Daniel Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of...

The Sunday Times January 29, 2006 ALF threatens all out war against Oxford students Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Nick Fielding ANIMAL activists have for the first time threatened violence against all staff and students at Oxford university over its plans for a £20m animal research laboratory. In a posting on an internet site, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has told its supporters that any academic, student or company connected to Oxford is a legitimate target, irrespective of whether they are involved in animal research. The warning threatens to turn the laboratory into one of the biggest confrontations between animal rights activists...

Three environmental activists were cooking up plastic explosives and had planned to test a device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted them. The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. The suspects planned assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a 'loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization' of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. Eric McDavid, 28, Zachary Jensen, 20, and Lauren Weiner, 20, remain in jail. They could enter a...

The good news: a federal grand jury in Eugene, Oregon, has indicted 11 people on charges that they committed acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Moreover, now one of the FBI's "highest domestic terrorism priorities," according to director Robert S. Mueller III, is to prosecute people who commit crimes "in the name of animal rights or the environment." Nevertheless, it remains worrisome that we still dismiss such terrorists as deranged individuals who pervert the ideology of environmentalism. Even more worrisome is that few of us intellectually grasp, and then rise...

FBI agent testifies Arizona bookstore owner is suspected... A federal agent on Friday named an Arizona activist bookstore owner as the second suspect in the 1998 arson attacks at Vail resort that stood for years as the most damaging single act of eco-terrorism in the nation. Catalyst Infoshop owner William C. Rodgers was the second suspect this week linked by a federal law enforcement official to the $12 million conflagration that has been cloaked in mystery for seven years. FBI Special Agent Doug Linter testified in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff, Ariz., that investigators suspect the Prescott, Ariz., bookstore owner...

The arrests could begin to close the book on one of Colorado’s enduring mysteries. At the time, the Vail firebombing was considered the costliest act of eco-terrorism in the country, causing $12 million in damage, destroying the Two Elk Lodge, a mountaintop restaurant, among other structures. "The indictment tells a story of four-and-a-half years of arson, vandalism, violence and destruction claimed to have been executed on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front or Earth Liberation Front, extremist movements known to support acts of domestic terrorism," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference today. Appearing with Gonzales, FBI Director...

After a delay of nearly a month, a Flagstaff woman accused of being connected with the 1998 firebombing of a logging company in Oregon has been released from jail. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Harvey, was released from an Oregon jail Jan. 10 on $150,000 bond. She is back in Flagstaff, ready to begin taking two classes at Northern Arizona University. Tankersley, a former employee at the university, was indicted in November by a federal grand jury in Oregon. She is accused of attempted arson and arson, acting as a lookout, in connection with a fire at U.S....

An Ashland area man faces 20 years in federal prison after an FBI investigation determined he aided in the 1997 firebombing of a horse meatpacking plant in Redmond. Jonathan Mark Christopher Paul, 39, of the 2000 block of Soda Mountain Road, was arrested Tuesday by FBI agents on charges of arson in connection with the July 21, 1997, nighttime fire at the Cavel West plant. The FBI connected Paul to the fire during an investigation into what the FBI describes as domestic terrorism involving arson — also known as ecosabotage — by members of the Animal Liberation Front and the...

Japan on Wednesday released a video in a bid to prove Greenpeace targeted its whaling ship in an Antarctic collision this week and accused the environmentalists of violent tactics. Japan's main whaling body put a video on its website that showed Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise moving steadily forward before hitting the whaling ship Nisshin Maru, whose movement was impeded by another whaling vessel nearby. "It was a deliberate action to get media coverage," Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research said in a statement. "The Arctic Sunrise could have avoided this collision. Instead the skipper turned the boat into the path of the...

Greenpeace has accused the Japanese whaling vessel Nisshin Maru of deliberately ramming its boat, the Arctic Sunrise, in the Southern Ocean before steaming off at high speed. The anti-whaling activists say they tried to contact the Japanese whaling boat shortly before they clashed. Greenpeace says none of the 25 crew on board the Arctic Sunrise were hurt and the boat is still seaworthy, despite receiving some damage. However, a statement from the Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research says the Nisshin Maru was deliberately rammed by Greenpeace. Greenpeace expedition leader Shane Rattenbury says his captain tried unsuccessfully to contact the captain...

Japanese warship 'to guard whalers' A STANDOFF between Japanese whalers and environmentalists has escalated, with a conservation group claiming the Japanese Government has sent a warship to Antarctic waters to protect its fleet. The Washington-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it had received a tip-off that a Japanese naval ship had been sent to the region to defend its whalers from protesters. The group said it was concerned the warship would try to seize its vessel and those of the two Greenpeace crews shadowing the whaling fleet through the Southern Ocean. "The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has made an...

LAUGHLIN, Nev. - A large coal-fired power plant will close at the end of the year rather than violate a court-ordered deadline to install an estimated $1.1 billion in pollution-control measures. Southern California Edison said Thursday the Mohave Generating Station, at the center of an environmental dispute several years ago, would close. The plant has provided the utility with 7 percent of its electricity, but the company said its 13 million customers would not be immediately affected because of other power sources. Under a 1999 consent decree won by environmental groups, the aging Mohave plant was required to upgrade its...

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona bookstore owner charged in the firebombing of a government wildlife lab in Washington committed suicide in his jail cell Thursday, officials said. William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz., suffocated after placing a plastic bag over his head while in a one-person cell in Flagstaff, the Coconino County medical examiner said. Rodgers was one of six people arrested earlier this month in connection with ecoterror attacks in Oregon and Washington in recent years. He was accused of setting fire to the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services facility in Olympia, Wash., in 1998....

SALEM -- Despite strong objections from ranchers, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted final amendments Thursday to a management plan for protected gray wolves expected to migrate into Oregon from Idaho. Currently, the management plan prohibits ranchers from killing wolves that attack livestock and doesn't include compensation for losses from wolf attacks. The Fish and Wildlife Commission had included compensation and authority for killing wolves in the plan that was adopted in February, pending approval by the Legislature of provisions needed to change state law. But lawmakers failed to agree on those provisions and bills to make the changes...

Animal rights terrorists have won a battle in New York, and all it took was a few gallons of paint and a little trespassing. On the evening of November 15th, according to a press release from the Animal Liberation Front, these thugs went to the home of Lloyd Harbor mayor Leland Hairr. They painted anti-hunting slogans across the home, gained access to the garage (the Animal Liberation Front says the garage door was open), and painted more anti-hunting slogans on both cars. Then they put a statement on the internet containing the mayor’s address and home phone number, adding, “His...