Domestic Terrorism

[Kyyle23]

Im curious as to how this board will react to this story, so I will withhold my feelings about it for a few pages

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/02/20/animalri...l.ap/index.html

 

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- One woman said she received an e-mail threatening to cut her 7-year-old son open and stuff him with poison. A man said he was showered with glass as people smashed all the windows of his home and overturned his wife's car.

 

Many others said they were besieged by screaming protesters outside their homes at all hours, deluged by threatening phone calls, and sent pornographic magazines they had not ordered.

 

The trauma that employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences and other companies say they experienced at the hands of radical animal rights advocates is on display during the federal court trial of a Philadelphia-based group and six of its members on domestic terrorism charges. The trial continues in Trenton this week.

 

Tears on the stand

Many targets testified that the harassment made them look over their shoulders when walking or driving, move or change their phone numbers, keep their kids from playing outdoors, and prompted several to buy guns.

 

Sally Dillenback said her young son would often crouch by the door brandishing a 5-inch kitchen knife when the doorbell rang, promising to protect his mommy.

 

"He told me not to worry," she testified last week. "He said he was going to get the animal people. Once I found him at the garage door with a knife. That was his state of mind. He was a 7-year-old boy."

 

Dillenback broke into tears as she recounted an anonymous e-mail that threatened her son.

 

"The person asked how I would feel if they cut open my son, Brad, and filled him with poison the way Huntingdon does with the animals," she said, breaking into tears. "That was devastating for me to see something like that."

 

Huntingdon Life Sciences, which also has operations in Cambridgeshire, England, tests drugs and consumer products on animals.

 

Five-year campaign

A group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty has waged a five-year campaign to shut it down, extending its pressure tactics beyond the lab to companies that insured it, traded its stock, lent it money, provided security for it and conducted other business with it, according to prosecution testimony.

 

The tactics worked in many instances as firms, including the insurer Marsh USA, dropped Huntingdon as a client after being targeted, the lab's lawyer said.

 

The group notes that its members are not charged with carrying out any of the illegal acts described in court, and denies inciting anyone to break the law. It says its activities were all legal.

 

Postings on the Web site recounting acts of harassment or vandalism at the homes and offices of targets are no different from news reports by mainstream media organizations, the group asserts.

 

Like almost all the others targeted by the group, Dillenback, a Marsh executive in Dallas, saw intensely private information about her family posted on the group's Web site. It listed their names, address, home phone number, where their children went to school, and even the name of her son's teacher and the fact that he sings in the choir.

 

Prosecutors say the postings were designed to terrorize the targets, and incite others to commit violence against them. The defendants are charged with animal-enterprise terrorism, conspiracy and interstate stalking.

 

Spokeswoman: Scary, not illegal

The trial of Kevin Kjonaas, Lauren Gazzola, Jacob Conroy, Joshua Harper, Andrew Stepanian and Darius Fullmer will likely hinge on whether prosecutors can prove the group did more than simply publish information online.

 

There has been no testimony that the group directed anyone to break the law.

 

"This isn't to be insensitive, but anytime someone is a target of a protest, they feel victimized and threatened," said Andrea Lindsay, a spokeswoman for the group.

 

"While people may find it obnoxious, unpleasant or scary, it's not illegal," she added. "The government is hoping to play on the jury's emotions. They're saying, `Don't think about the law, don't think about the facts. We've got a crying woman up here on the stand; what are you going to do to make her feel better?"'

 

Prosecutors have tried to humanize the case, letting people tell in their own words how their lives were upended after they were targeted by the group for "direct action."

 

Marian Harlos, managing director of the San Antonio office of a Marsh subsidiary, testified she got late-night calls in which someone asked "Are you scared? Do you think the puppies should be scared?"

 

Masked protesters target homes

Like many others, she said she had to endure noisy pickets outside her home in which protesters banged drums and screamed "Puppy killer!" through megaphones, and paraded with photos of mutilated animals.

 

Masked protesters parked down the street from her house, videotaping her comings and goings. They barged into her office, screaming and tossing leaflets, and others ruined the rear door with super-adhesive glue and animal stickers, she said.

 

"I had young children," she testified. "They were no longer able to go outside and play. Would someone be in the back yard? Would someone try to take them?

 

Eventually, she and her family had to move.

 

Some Huntingdon workers in New Jersey also say they were targeted.

 

Henning Jonassen, the lab's necropsy director, testified he was watching TV at home in Somerville when someone smashed all his ground-floor windows, and turned his wife's car over. Toxicologist Carol Auletta said she saw her face on "Wanted" posters all over downtown Princeton, calling her a mentally ill murderer.

[Texsox]

Not a fan. Work on changing the laws, not by ruining someone's life.

[Rex Kickass]

I always thought having junk mail sent to someone's house was more of a prank then terrorism. Granted a mean prank - but I don't think that it is "terrorism." Broken windows, threats of murdering your kids? Yeah, that's not legal. I don't know that I would call it terrorism either though.

[NorthSideSox72]

Im curious as to how this board will react to this story, so I will withhold my feelings about it for a few pages

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/02/20/animalri...l.ap/index.html

 

Yeesh.

 

Well, I am not familiar with the specific wording of laws on terrorism in PA, so I can't characterize guilt on that item. But these people were certainly guilty of an array of other crimes, including criminal damage to property and possibly some sort of assault.

 

In any case, its disgusting and wrong. Animal testing is a sensitive issue, but just like people who attack abortion clinics, these people have apparently stepped past the line of protest and moved on to criminal abuse. They should be punished.

[Flash Tizzle]

I'm not familiar with every division of the law--especially those stemming from these harrassment issues--but several of those alledged incidents cross the line.

 

If nothing else, they'll be charged with vandalizing private property. Perhaps a restraining order will be issued. All I know is if I lived within the area, and were a neighbor to these people, I would do my best to protect the family. If these harrassments were occuring to my family, you better believe I would have kicked the s*** out of a few of them. Pussy animal right activists can't possibly defend themselves.

 

It's a noble cause, but issuing threats and disrupting lives shouldn't be the method they use.

[Balta1701]

I always thought having junk mail sent to someone's house was more of a prank then terrorism. Granted a mean prank - but I don't think that it is "terrorism." Broken windows, threats of murdering your kids? Yeah, that's not legal. I don't know that I would call it terrorism either though.

This reminds me of those debates over Hate Crime legislation...how exactly does one define what is and what is not terrorism, and can a person be punished more stringently because some action is defined as terrorism instead of just vandalism?

[NorthSideSox72]

This reminds me of those debates over Hate Crime legislation...how exactly does one define what is and what is not terrorism, and can a person be punished more stringently because some action is defined as terrorism instead of just vandalism?

 

Indeed, terrorism is a legal quagmire. Here is an example. I know of an instance where a number of drunken revelers tried to prevent their party from being broken up by throwing things at their neighbors. Apparently, the neighbors threatened to call police, so the partiers started lobbing threats and bricks over the fence. Cops showed up, saw them doing it, and they were charged with terrorism. I don't know what the final result was, though.

 

EDIT: This was in Iowa

Edited February 20, 2006 by NorthSideSox72

[Rex Kickass]

Yeah. I don't know why terrorism itself has to be illegal. Terrorism is the commitment of crimes anyway, why don't we just try them for that?

[juddling]

I always thought having junk mail sent to someone's house was more of a prank then terrorism. Granted a mean prank - but I don't think that it is "terrorism." Broken windows, threats of murdering your kids? Yeah, that's not legal. I don't know that I would call it terrorism either though.

If it were abortion protestors smashing the windows of abortion clinic workers houses, would is stil not be terrorism? Just asking, not accusing.

[NorthSideSox72]

If it were abortion protestors smashing the windows of abortion clinic workers houses, would is stil not be terrorism?  Just asking, not accusing.

If one is, the other is, as I stated earlier.

[Kyyle23]

I would have to say that this is terrorism because the crime of personal property destruction is directly linked to the protest of the Huntington Life Science Laboratory.

[Balta1701]

I would have to say that this is terrorism because the crime of personal property destruction is directly linked to the protest of the Huntington Life Science Laboratory.

So based on that definition, any crime which destroys property related to a poltical protest would be considered terrorism? Then the question I fire back is the one I hear when hate crime debates come up...how do you judge when something is related to politics?

 

(Note to DHS guys reading this post: this is a hypothetical, and I'm not going to do it). If a Judge somewhere were to be robbed and beaten up, should the people who beat him up be charged with terrorism? If it merits a harsher penalty, of course they'd deny that their motives involved politics, so how would you judge?

[Kyyle23]

So based on that definition, any crime which destroys property related to a poltical protest would be considered terrorism?  Then the question I fire back is the one I hear when hate crime debates come up...how do you judge when something is related to politics? 

 

(Note to DHS guys reading this post: this is a hypothetical, and I'm not going to do it).  If a Judge somewhere were to be robbed and beaten up, should the people who beat him up be charged with terrorism?  If it merits a harsher penalty, of course they'd deny that their motives involved politics, so how would you judge?

 

Well, the way Im looking at it, the Judge would be getting beaten up for something the Judge did, that these people were reacting to (ie. jailed one of their buddies, jailed one of them, etc.). And the criminals beating up the judge would have to be doing it to get something done, as the people in the article are trying to shut down Huntington Lab by going after their insurers, workers, sponsors, etc.

 

So I guess I would say yes, if there were a political protest in which a politicians personal property was destroyed and/or his family was threatened because of a stance the politician takes, then it would be terrorism to me.

[Balta1701]

Well, the way Im looking at it, the Judge would be getting beaten up for something the Judge did, that these people were reacting to (ie. jailed one of their buddies, jailed one of them, etc.).  And the criminals beating up the judge would have to be doing it to get something done, as the people in the article are trying to shut down Huntington Lab by going after their insurers, workers, sponsors, etc. 

 

So I guess I would say yes, if there were a political protest in which a politicians personal property was destroyed and/or his family was threatened because of a stance the politician takes, then it would be terrorism to me.

So now let's say that my motive was actually just to rob the judge. But at the same time, the judge just happened to have finished hearing arguments in a controversial case. What then? How would you judge whether my motive was just robbery or if it was political?

[Kyyle23]

So now let's say that my motive was actually just to rob the judge.  But at the same time, the judge just happened to have finished hearing arguments in a controversial case.  What then?  How would you judge whether my motive was just robbery or if it was political?

 

 

I guess a background check of the suspect would reveal a motive, dont you think? And I mean that in the sense that the suspects in this case would probably have a lot of things in their personal life pointing in the direction of a politically motivated personal attack on this judge.

I dont know, im going off my feelings on this case so my answers probably arent very well articulated. Its not just vandalism, it has been an extended period of time that these people have been treated this way. . In this case I see these PETA types who are conducting mass smear campaigns on their own neighbors as well as the corporations they are working for, threatening their children, damaging property, posting their names and their extended families names on the internet, to me that is as close to foreign terrorism as you can get without being called that.

 

And i probably wont agree with whats going on inside Huntington either, but like Tex said, change the law.

[southsideirish71]

Lets look at the definition of terrorist.

 

Definitions include intimidation for political gain and the unconventional use of violence against civilians.

 

What is the purpose of the violence and threats that this group, and eco groups like this use . Is it for financial gain, no. Is it to intimidate for a political gain? Yes. If it against civilians? If you look at it like this you can see that in this context these people are terrorist. And if you follow groups like this and others like the ELF, ALF, and their front end political group PETA you see a disturbing amount of targetting of civiilans and other groups to get their objective across. The fact that these groups work in cells with autonomy just like the jihadist that we fight over seas. So far these groups have been relatively lucky that one of their bombings hasnt killed large amounts of people. But then again as long as it isnt an innocent chicken, I guess they dont care.

 

 

Here are some quotes from the co-founder of PETA

 

Arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are ‘acceptable crimes’ when used for the animal cause.

- PETA co-founder Alex Pacheco lists the “acceptable” tactics to fight for animal rights, Associated Press (January 3, 1989)

 

Bill Maher f***ed up quote, he is an animal activist/nut

 

To those people who say, `My father is alive because of animal experimentation,’ I say `Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live.’ Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of trade off.

- US magazine (February 1, 1999)

 

 

Craig Rosebraugh, Grantee in an open letter to its members

 

Physically shut down financial centers … Using any means necessary, shut down the national networks of NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. Not just occupations but actually engage in strategies and tactics which knock the networks off the air … Spread the battle to the ... very heads of government and U.S. corporations ... Hit them in their personal lives, visit their homes … Actively target U.S. military establishments within the United States... strike hard and fast and retreat in anonymity. Select another location, strike again hard and fast and quickly retreat in anonymity ... Do not get caught. DO NOT GET CAUGHT. Do not get sent to jail. Stay alert, keep active, and keep fighting.

- Open letter to activists, published on the Independent Media Center website (March 17, 2003)

 

I think [food producers] should appreciate that we’re only targeting their property. Because frankly I think it’s time to start targeting them.

- "Conference on Organized Resistance," American University (January 26, 2003)

 

As a direct-action warrior, it made a lot of sense to me to attack institutions in the fur trade … We need to destroy them by any means necessary.

- "Conference on Organized Resistance," American University (January 26, 2003)

 

f we really believe that animals have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then, of course we’re going to be, as a movement, blowing things up and smashing windows … I think it’s a great way to bring about animal liberation … I think it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow. I think it's perfectly appropriate for people to take bricks and toss them through the windows ... Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it. [click here to listen]

- Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vegan campaign coordinator, at the “Animal Rights 2001” conference

 

and my favorite

 

McVeigh's decision to go vegetarian groups him with some of the world's greatest visionaries.

- Bruce Friedrich praising Oklahoma City bomber and mass-murderer Timothy McVeigh, for choosing a vegetarian last meal

 

 

Eco Terror

Edited February 20, 2006 by southsideirish71

[Rex Kickass]

If it were abortion protestors smashing the windows of abortion clinic workers houses, would is stil not be terrorism?  Just asking, not accusing.

Smashing windows is illegal. The motivation behind it "hate crime or terrorism or not" is irrelevant as to how illegal it is. To me its only relevant when determining sentence punishment.

 

When we broaden the term Terrorism to include things like a smashed window, does that mean we're now fighting a war against petty vandalism?

[BHAMBARONS]

I can shed some light into this:

 

According to the Alabama Criminal Code 13A which is the same as all of the other 49 states. The act of Terrorism occurs when a person by violence tries to induce public policy or coerce a group of citizens.

 

 

 

Here is the actual wording:

 

An indictment for the crime of terrorism shall charge the defendant with a specified offense and shall state that the defendant acted with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination, or kidnapping.

Edited February 20, 2006 by BHAMBARONS

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

People like that should be rounded up and locked in a 5' x 5' cell for a whole lot of years. Just small enough so you cant stand up or lay down.

[Texsox]

People like that should be rounded up and locked in a 5' x 5' cell for a whole lot of years.  Just small enough so you cant stand up or lay down.

Nuke received a A in his military prison guard class.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Nuke received a A in his military prison guard class.

 

 

I should be writing the curriculum.

 

Personally I believe those who terrorize others and make their lives miserable should have the same thing done to them. I wonder how much they'd like animals if I sicced a bunch of rabid dogs on em?

Edited February 20, 2006 by NUKE_CLEVELAND

[NorthSideSox72]

I can shed some light into this: 

 

According to the Alabama Criminal Code 13A which is the same as all of the other 49 states.  The act of Terrorism occurs when a person by violence tries to induce public policy or coerce a group of citizens.

Here is the actual wording:

 

An indictment for the crime of terrorism shall charge the defendant with a specified offense and shall state that the defendant acted with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination, or kidnapping.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

But criminal codes are not necessarily identical (and in fact usually are not) from state to state. The general spirit of most laws is very similar, of course. But with something as nebulous as terrorism, I suspect there are differences.

 

For example, the Iowa law starts the same as you state, but adds its own flavor...

 

"Terrorism" means an act intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or to influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a unit of government, by shooting, throwing, launching, discharging, or otherwise using a dangerous weapon at, into, or in a building, vehicle, airplane, railroad engine, railroad car, or boat, occupied by another person, or within an assembly of people. The terms "intimidate" , "coerce" , "intimidation" , and "coercion" , as used in this definition, are not to be construed to prohibit picketing, public demonstrations, and similar forms of expressing ideas or views regarding legitimate matters of public interest protected by the United States and Iowa constitutions.

2002 Acts, ch 1075, §2 708A.1

 

Thus explaining my drunk idiots example. Also note the exception for expression of ideas, which in Iowa, could be construed as to be applicable to the case of animal rights activists. In that case, their crimes would not fall under this statute.

Edited February 20, 2006 by NorthSideSox72

[BHAMBARONS]

Thanks for the info.

 

But criminal codes are not necessarily identical (and in fact usually are not) from state to state.  The general spirit of most laws is very similar, of course.  But with something as nebulous as terrorism, I suspect there are differences.

 

For example, the Iowa law starts the same as you state, but adds its own flavor...

Thus explaining my drunk idiots example.  Also note the exception for expression of ideas, which in Iowa, could be construed as to be applicable to the case of animal rights activists.  In that case, their crimes would not fall under this statute.

 

 

Yeah that is my bad, I just assumed with the Terriorism act of 2002 that every state's terror laws are the same. Man IA has some strick terror laws.

[NorthSideSox72]

Yeah that is my bad, I just assumed with the Terriorism act of 2002 that every state's terror laws are the same.  Man IA has some strick terror laws.

 

Yes, IA makes the concept very finite, and I tend to like that. For reasons Rex and others have suggested, I'd prefer that people be charged for their more direct crimes and transgressions, as opposed to trying to apply a pattern or theme and create artificial legal differentiation.