UK Animal Activists Sentenced To 4-11 Years In Prison

"Seven animal rights activists in the U.K. were sentenced to up to 11 years in prison Wednesday for “conspiracy to blackmail” in their campaign to shut down the notorious animal testing laboratory Huntingdon Life Sciences.

The judge in the case called the grassroots campaign “urban terrorism” run with “almost military precision.”

The UK prosecution is quite similar to charges brought against seven animal rights activists in the United States, dubbed the SHAC 7. The US activists were sentenced to between one and six years for conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, conspiracy to stalk, stalking and conspiracy to harass using a telecommunications device. Their cases were recently argued before an appeals courts in Philadelphia (here’s a closer look at the hearing).

In both sets of cases, the government linked the defendants to a controversial campaign website that published all news related to the movement to shut down HLS, both legal and illegal. Neither the U.S. nor the U.K. government argued that the defendants committed the illegal acts in the news accounts published on their websites, but that, through their vocal support for those tactics and publication of communiqués, they “conspired” to do so.

The U.S. and U.K. governments argued that, by publishing the addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of corporations tied to HLS, and executives with those corporations, that the defendants were part of a conspiracy (in the U.S., the conspiracy was to commit “terrorism” and “stalk,” in the UK it was a conspiracy to “blackmail.”)"

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Green Is The New Red