US nuclear protestors found guilty

by: Max Obuszewski

Tennessee: Jury finds protesters guilty of trespassing at Tennessee nuclear weapons plant.

20 June, a federal jury, convicted a roman catholic nun and two other protesters of trespassing at the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee during a "stop the bombs" demonstration. Sentencing is scheduled for 20 September.

The protestors - Elizabeth Ann Lentsch, who is known as Sister Mary Dennis, Mary Elinor Adams and Timothy Joseph Mellon - were charged with federal trespassing violations. The three had climbed over a metal barricade blocking an entrance at the Department of Energy site known as Y-12 about 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tennessee.

"Stop the bombs" demonstrations are staged each April and August in Oak Ridge, the city that produced the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

The protesters had hoped the case would allow them to speak out against the production of nuclear weapons and to claim the work at Y-12 violates international law and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty the United States signed in 1970 but a judge barred the arguments last week.