On January 17th 2009 six people broke into EDO MBM/ITT in Brighton and caused £189 000 worth of damage to computers, servers, lathes and other equipment. The activists, calling themselves the ‘decommissioners’, took their action in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza which had claimed 1400 lives by the 17th. EDO MBM/ITT manufactures the arming unit for the Israeli F16 bombrack.
The six were arrested, along with three people alleged to have supported the action. All nine were charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage. At a month long trial at Hove Crown Court seven of the activists argued that they had a lawful excuse to damage EDO’s property as the company was complicit in war crimes. All seven were acquitted on July 2nd 2010 after the jury gave five unanimous not guilty verdicts and the judge directed that the final two should be acquitted. One activist had been found with no case to answer earlier in the trial due to lack of evidence.
Full story at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/07/456201.html
One interesting aspect of the case for the Target Brimar campaign was the Judge’s view on End User Certificates. Those who have been following the Target Brimar campaign will know that Brimar has attempted to use End User Certificates to ‘prove’ that they have not been selling components for Israeli Apache helicopters in recent years, whilst saying that they are proud to supply the US and UK. This is what Judge Bathurst-Norman at Lewes Crown Court had to say:
“Firstly, the USA’s policy is to ensure that Israel is supplied with weapons. 95%Â of Israel’s weapons come from the USA, 4% from the EU and 1% from the United Kingdom.
As I have said already, the USA refuses to be bound by the terms of any End User Certificate.
What is an End User Certificate? If I want to export arms from this country I need to obtain a form from the DTI and fill it in, and then at the end of it there will be a box labelled “End User” and into that box there has to go a signature acceptable to the Government confirming that the person who signed there is indeed at the end of the chain and will not be selling items on.
Perhaps in comedy there is always a grain of truth. Some of you might, like me, have been a great admirer of the “Yes Minister” series. I don’t know if any of you ever watched a particular version of it, but if you did you may recall a scene in which Jim Hacker, the Minister, tried to get an understanding of the End User Certificate from Sir Humphrey, the Permanent Secretary, and he
was concerned that a particular detonating device had found itself in the hands of Italian terrorists.He ended up by asking if the system was really a charade, to which he received the answer from Sir Humphrey: “I think this conversation should end here, don’t you Minister!” (Laughter)
Well, as you saw in that defence exhibit, the Oxfam Report, because parts can be exported, perhaps without the need for an End User Certificate, and then be assembled elsewhere into a weapon, you may think the system is one which it is not too difficult to circumvent. In the first three months of 2008 the United Kingdom exported to Israel20,000,000 worth of weapons, that rising from 6,000,000 in the previous year.”
The Judge’s full summing up can be found at http://www.thejc.com/35771/judge-bathurst-norman-full-summing
