Anti-War Activist Willing to Face Prison

by: Nendick Michael

Brighton: An anti-war activist arrested at a peaceful sit-down demonstration before the invasion of Iraq is prepared to face prison tomorrow for his refusal to pay £420 in court fines and costs.

Michael Nendick, a 37-year-old English teacher, will have attended a fines court in Brighton on Friday 12 August to explain his decision. His refusal to pay is likely to result in a custodial sentence. “I don’t want to co-operate with a court system that is complicit in mass murder, that fails to support citizens trying to prevent state terrorism by our own government,” explains Nendick. “I would rather go to prison than give money to a system that, quite literally, lets our government get away with murder.”

Nendick was among 60 peaceful activists arrested in January 2003 for “obstructing the public highway without lawful excuse” at the main entrance to Northwood, Britain’s military HQ, where the invasion of Iraq was being planned. In court, Nendick argued that he did have a lawful excuse. “My action was necessary because the prescribed methods of opposing government policy – writing to MPs and going on demonstration marches – were extremely unlikely to work. Even in 2002 it was evident that our government was contriving a justification for war, using lies, distortion and fear-mongering to influence public and parliamentary opinion. I wanted to take the most promising opposing action that I could and civil disobedience fits the bill. It creates the maximum political cost for the government going ahead with their plans. The magistrate rejected my argument without addressing it. He simply said I could have moved behind the barrier and protested there for as long as I liked. He ignored my point that if I had thought the prescribed methods were sufficient I would not have got myself arrested.”

Nendick accuses the British government of being a terrorist organisation, in turn making all taxpayers sponsors of terrorism. “Mass killing and violence for political ends - of people as innocent as the victims of terrorism in the UK, Spain and the USA - is what I call terrorism,” says Nendick. “Of course, this perspective is very controversial as it goes completely against the mainstream view of our government. Few judges want to make themselves vulnerable to criticism from other establishment figures by actually taking such a controversial perspective into account. The easiest thing for a judge who wants a quiet life to do is to find a way to invalidate the defence before the issue of the government being mass murderers can be addressed. They can do that by following the conventional, though unjustified, application of the criteria for the necessity defence.”

Nendick appealed to the Crown Court who upheld the verdict with, says Nendick, “the same remarkable tunnel vision required not to see my argument.” Nendick applied for an appeal in the High Court. After waiting over a year for a hearing, he withdrew his appeal after receiving expert advice that any court would not examine the arguments and that his almost certain defeat would probably result in even more restrictive criteria for future defendants.
Nendick explains why he would prefer to be imprisoned than pay the fines and costs imposed. “I do not want to endorse the complicity of the courts in the mass murder by the government. The government plans and carry out acts just as barbaric and just as unjustified as the terrorist attacks that have taken place in this country. By failing to act on its responsibility to hold the government accountable for its actions, or even to support citizens trying to oppose them, our legal system condemns yet more innocent people to violent deaths, injuries and other devastation. As things stand right now, we have terrorists in our country, planning and carrying out repeated and sustained acts of mass terrorism in other countries. And these terrorists get away with it because they happen to be members of the government. That seems wrong to me. ”

Source: micnen@yahoo.com