PFC Bradley Manning has been in a maximum-security prison in Virginia, USA for the past eight months after being accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks. This information includes the “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts a 2007 US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 12 people. Manning has been in solitary confinement and under constant surveillance although he has not yet been tried or convicted of his crimes.
Manning is being held in the Quantico Confinement…
Christian peace activist Chris Cole was released from HMP Wandsworth this morning after serving 15 days for an act of civil disobedience. Cole was arrested in 2009 for criminal damage in response to a nonviolent direct action at the Defense and Security Equipment International 2009 Arms Fair. He spray painted the entrance to the conference center with ‘Make Peace, not war machines’ and the ground outside with ‘Stop this bloody business’ and ‘Arms trade = death.’ After his arrest, Cole was…
On 19 January, Christian peace activist Chris Cole was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment by Westminster central magistrates court for non-payment of a fine following a protest at the DSEi arms fair in September 2009. Chris spraypainted “Build Peace Not War Machines” and “Stop this Bloody Business” across the entrance to the QEII conference centre in central London, where the high-level “UK defence conference” was being held.
Defending himself in court, Chris, coordinator of the…
To all intents and purposes, last Wednesday was a normal day. I dropped my husband, Chris Cole, in Headington and watched him walk away in the darkness to the London bus, as I often do. Then I headed back home for the usual morning routine of breakfast, sandwich making, and the school run.
But last Wednesday was different in one respect. For the second time in four years, Chris was returning to Westminster Magistrates to “wilfully refuse” to pay a fine he’d incurred during an …
On 4 November, sentences were handed down to the remaining two defendants who took part in actions in Sweden in October 2008, disarming 12 grenade launchers and parts to nine howitzers at arms factories in two different locations.
Anna Andersson and Martin Smedjeback were ordered to pay damages totalling nearly £7,000 to the arms manufacturer Saab AB. They had both previously been sentenced to four months for their action. Co-activists Catherine Laska and Pelle Strindlund had…
Thirty years ago this October, the first issue of the Newsletter of the National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective (later renamed the Nuclear Resister) reported on just one anti-nuclear civil disobedience action – that of the Plowshares Eight.
On 9 September 1980, eight US activists made their way into a General Electric factory in Pennsylvania, where they hammered and poured blood on nuclear missile nose-cones. This action inspired a global movement, and scores of similar acts…
One in ten of Britain’s prisoners are former members of the armed forces, according to the Howard League for Penal Reform. “The percentage of ex-servicemen [sic] in jail has increased by a third in the last five years,” said ex-paratrooper Tony Banks.
“It is well publicised that some servicemen [and women] face problems when adjusting to civilian life but bitter military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that we have not had such a large number of combat troops returning to civvy…
SY What do you do?
CS I meet up with prisoners who have literacies issues and discuss how improving their literacy levels can open up opportunities for them.
SY But what is the importance of literacies education for offenders?
CS It can help prisoners understand why they are where they are. Generally a lot of it is not their own fault. A lot of them have suffered an educational system that has probably failed them and they have internalised that failure. They have blamed…
Hicham Yezza, a Nottingham university peace activist, was convicted in February on immigration charges - which he is appealing. (See PN 2499-500 for the original smears against him.) Hich spoke to PN after being released from prison in mid-August.
PN What happened after you were given your sentence of nine months in prison?
HY I was led away to a cell downstairs where my details were taken and I had a few minutes to thank my solicitors for the work they did.
I was then…
They say that families live prison sentences just as much as the prisoner and that was certainly true for us. On January 22, my husband Chris Cole was sentenced to 28 days imprisonment for non-payment of a fine incurred at an anti-war protest in 2005.
This event was not a surprise to us, we had been planning for it in one way or another ever since we first met. However, recognising something is inevitable and dealing with the actual experience are two separate things.
The…
On 12 February, after a surprisingly brief trial (the judge cut the presentation of complex evidence down to one day), peace activist and former Nottingham University student Hicham Yezza came closer to being deported from Britain after a jury found him guilty of lying to immigration officials about the expiry of his visa – “securing avoidance of enforcement action by deceptive means”.
Sentencing is due on 6 March, at which point the government is likely to resume its campaign to…
Seven animal-rights activists of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) were jailed on 21 January, with sentences ranging from four to 11 years in prison.
On 23 December, Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham, Gavin Medd-Hall and Heather Nicholson were found guilty of conspiracy to blackmail companies associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), which kills five hundred animals daily conducting research for pharmaceutical companies. They were sentenced to four, five, eight and 11 years,…
On 6 June, after an 18-week trial, the operator of a website criticising animal testing company Sequani, was found guilty under section 145 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA), “interfering with the contractual relationships of a laboratory”.
For allegedly conspiring to organise protests at Sequani Limited and associated companies, Sean Kirtley was jailed for four and a half years followed by a five-year ASBO (anti-social behaviour order). The main “proof”…
At the time of going to press (and almost a month after she died) the exact cause of Pauline Campbell’s death remains unclear. At her funeral in Whitchurch a former work colleague said simply: “She died of a broken heart”.
Beyond the church and at the cemetery, fellow peace and prison campaigners Joan Meredith and Helen John stood silently holding a single banner. It read “Home Office Responsible for Pauline’s Death”. Helen John explained “Pauline’s life could have been turned…
After a vigorous campaign to defend him, Nottingham University staff member and peace activist Hicham Yezza was freed from detention on 15 June and the threat of deportation lifted.
After a university staff member found the manual on his computer, Hicham, editor of the university peace magazine, Ceasefire, was arrested on campus on 21 May, along with 22-year old research student Rizwaan Sabir. Both were held under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading an al-Qa’eda training…
