Disarming Woman

After 57 disarmaments, £4.5 million of damage and a collective total of 156 years spent in prison, the Ploughshares Movement finally clocked up it’s first acquittal.

Amid extraordinary scenes of jubilation, Lotta Kronlid, Andrea Needham, Joe Wilson and Angie Zelta were last week cleared of causing £1.5 million of damage to an Indonesian-bound Hawk fighter, on a Ploughshares action named ‘Seeds of Hope’. Despite disallowing hearsay evidence, Judge “Wicked” Wickham recognised the womens’ defence, and permitted a video containing shocking footage of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre to be shown to the jury. Defence witnesses included Jose Ramos Horta, East Timor’s exiled Foreign Minister, Carmel Budiardjo, who had spent three years in an Indonesian jail, and John Pilger, who had entered East Timor in 1993 to secretly film the documentary “Death of a Nation”. After four hours of deliberation, the judge accepted a 10-2 majority on the three counts of criminal damage and four of conspiracy. “When the foreman stood up I was thinking: well, I’ve prepared myself for several years in jail and here it comes,” recalls Andrea Needham, who, like Lotta and Angie, defended herself. “When he said “not guilty” there was this huge gasp around the courtroom. We didn’t dare breathe until he’d read out each of the seven verdicts, and then the whole courtroom erupted.”

Outside the court, the women were instantly served with injunction notices, which were immediately torn up by supporters. “We were overwhelmed by the courage of the jury in accepting what had been said,” says Joe Wilson. “That verdict was an indictment of British Government policy and British Aerospace’s actions in selling weapons to Indonesia. It was a

day for justice, and a day for East Timor.” Also undoubtedly a day that will have made the whole ‘arms industry’ very nervous. As one of the women said “Outside, people were saying that we couldn’t go around smashing up other people’s property. But people in prison don’t have hang ups about that. They accepted that if planes are going to kill people, then you stop them.”

The women now intend to bring out a private prosecution against BAe for contravening The Genocide Act.

To contact Seeds of Hope call 0171 923 9511. To get involved in upcoming actions against the arms trade contact CAAT on 0171 281 0297 or Stop the Hawks on 0161 834 0295.