from Peace News, July/August 2010
On 4 June, a jury at Belfast crown court found nine women not guilty of charges including breaking and entering into the Derry offices of arms manufacturer Raytheon during the 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza.
On 12 January 2009, Riosin Barton, Roisin Bryce, Elizabeth Doherty, Goretti Hagan, Diana King, Jackie McKenna, Sharron Meehan, Helen Reynolds and Julia Torrojo had intended to bring down Raytheon’s computer to highlight Raytheon’s supplying missile software to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Instead they chained themselves to doors inside the offices in an attempt to force a criminal investigation into Raytheon, apparently agreed to by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Raytheon reduced operations soon after and fully closed its facilities in Derry a year later.
The defence in court was that the IDF were guilty of war crimes in Gaza, aided and abetted by Raytheon, including by its faciklities in Derry, and that the action was intended to prevent or delay these crimes.
The defence was apparently accepted by the jury. One man supporting the action was fined for spray-painting; another given a discharge for impersonating a police office. Three others were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The first Raytheon Nine were men acquitted after a similar action in Derry in August 2009 (see PN 2499-2500).
