Opponents Prevail Over Dirty Bombs

[struggle4progress]

By John M. LaForge

In the span of five days, separate juries found two groups of anti- war activists “not-guilty” of trespass last December. Such verdicts are extremely rare, but four different juries have now sided with peace activists who refused to leave the premises of the biggest arms merchant in Minnesota—Alliant Techsystems, Inc. (ATK)—before getting an appointment. After refusing to talk with them last July, the company’s managers had them arrested. Along with an identical acquittal in October 2003, and a similar one in 1997, the politically-charged trials—all conducted by different judges in Hennepin County District courts—have vindicated a total of 106 people. The 1997 group—79 protesters in all—won a “not guilty” verdict after showing that the outlaw status of land mines excused what otherwise appeared to be trespassing.

This past January and May, three other groups of alleged trespassers had their charges dropped just prior to trial. Another group of 34 civil resisters arrested March 14 had charges dismissed on a technicality—a hastily-enacted Edina city ordinance had not been officially published, i.e., enacted, before it was charged against the protesters.

Alliant Tech, a $2.4 billion weapons giant headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, is one of the nation’s foremost producers of “depleted” uranium munitions (DU). The armor-piercing shells are made of radioactive waste uranium-238 left over after uranium-235 has been removed for use in reactor fuel and H-bombs. The misnomer “depleted” is a soothing Pentagon distraction, since DU is “depleted” only of uranium-235. The shells are solid radioactive waste and turn into chemically toxic and carcinogenic dust when they smash and burn through hard targets.

Three of the defendants in the December 14 acquittal had visited Iraq and seen firsthand the consequences of using nuclear waste as a weapon of war. Jane Hosking, John Heid, and Mike Miles—all of Anathoth Community Farm, an intentional anti-war community near Luck, Wisconsin, testified as witnesses to the documented increases in cancer and leukemia in southern Iraq since the U.S.’s 1991 bombardment. <snip>

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2005/laforge0705.html