Smash EDO Mass Demo - Wednesday 13th October
Venue to be announced - to receive updates email smashedo@riseup.net or text 07538093930
EDO make weapons components vital for the waging of aerial war. EDO's technology is used to attack people from Palestine to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Pakistan. They arm F-16s, build components for Paveway bombs and help develop technology for Predator and Reaper drones.
During Israel's 2009 massacre in Gaza the 'decommissioners' broke into EDO and by causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage shut down the production line. Their defence was that theyu were acting to prevent war crimes. Sixteen months later they were found not guilty by a unanimous jury verdict.
The question after all this is, how long can EDO sustain their bloody business in Brighton? Now it's time for a final push to remove the factory from Brighton.
Our action comes at a time when the people of Afghanistan are being targetted by remote control. Unmanned drones piloted by mercenaries on the other side of the globe are used to maintain aerial supremacy in Afghan skies. Tens of thousands of Afghans have died in the nine year assault. Now is the time to attack the industries which are propping upthe occupation.
It's Hammertime! We are calling for people from around the UK, and beyond, to join us in besieging EDO. We aim to shut the factory for the day through the creativity and diversity of our actions.
After the historic victory of the EDO Decommissioners earlier this month, the judge in the case, Judge George Bathurst-Norman, has become subject of a concerted campaign of smears and defamation by a number of right-wing columnists, the Zionist Federation, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews on grounds that his summary of the evidence was 'anti-semitic'.
The Office of Judicial Complaints (OJC) has as a result opened an investigation into Judge Bathurst Normans handling of the case.
Although we don't normally find ourselves sticking up for judges, we find the charge of anti-semitism a grossly cynical attempt to undermine the significance of these acquittals of pro-Palestinian activists on evidence of Israeli war crimes that was for the most part agreed by the Crown Prosecution Service.
There is nothing anti-semitic in putting agreed evidence of Israeli war crimes to a jury.
You can express your concern about this investigation by sending an email to the Office Judicial Complaints, marking your email 'Bathurst Norman'.
customer@ojc.gsi.gov.uk
A full transcript of the Judges summary of the evidence has been published by the Jewish Chronicle here.
Elijah Smith, decommissioner of EDO MBM/ITT, is free after a year and a half in Jail. Well Done Elijah!
All Decommissioners acquitted -Resisting War Crimes is Officially not a Crime
The EDO Decommissioners have all walked free after unanimous acquittals following the three week trial which concluded on Friday (2nd July) at Hove Crown Court. What began as a trial of the Decommissioners effectively ended up with the Brighton arms manufacturer, and the war crimes of the Israeli state, in the dock. Is it all over for EDO/ITT in Brighton? It might be now...
"It's a real victory for the anti-war movement, The jury were presented with the facts and they supported our motivations. If people in Britain knew the truth away from media manipulations they would all support our actions" - Ornella Sabeine, EDO Decommissioner.
After a nail-biting twenty-four hiatus, the jury came to decision on the Decommissioners Case - 100% Not Guilty! Six of the seven defendants Tom Woodhead, Bob Nicholls, Ornella Saibene, Harvey Tadman, Simon Levin and Chris Osmond came smiling out of Hove Trial Centre at the end of a gruelling three and half week trial. Elijah Smith was remanded in custody for another offence. Five were acquitted on Wednesday afternoon, the other two Chris and Elijah had to wait until this morning. They had waited eighteen months for this moment.
The jury decisions were all completely unanimous, an indication perhaps of the depth of feeling ignited by the evidence presented of war atrocities committed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
It was on the night of the 16th January 2009 that six activists broke into EDO MBM's manufacturing facility on Home Farm Rd Brighton. For an hour they wreaked havoc with hammers. Filing cabinets and computers were hurled from top-floor window. Machinery was also sabotaged. One of the reasons that the six had so much time in the factory was ironically that Sussex police saw a bomb in the car-park and cordoned off the area for specialists to arrive. The 'bomb' was in fact a dummy, a prop for EDO to display at trade fairs, precision guided out of an upstairs window by the decommissioners.
The six had pre-recorded videos to be posted on Indymedia after the action You can watch these here. In his video Elijah Smith said "I don't feel I'm going to do anything illegal tonight, but I'm going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually produce munitions and these very dirty bombs that have been provided to the Israeli army so that they can kill children. The time for talking has gone too far. I'm not a writer, I'm just a person from the community and I'm deeply disgusted".
The jury requested to view those videos again before they made their historic decision ...and they obviously liked what they saw.
In effect the trial was turned around: it was EDO MBM in the shape of managing director Paul Hills who found themselves in the dock. Laughably they had come to court intending to pass themselves off as a company primarily manufacturing in-flight entertainment equipment. He was presented with a dossier of evidence painstakingly built up over the years by campaigners, which pointed firmly at the company's complicity in war crimes.
Paul Hills was due to be giving evidence again on Thursday after accusing a campaigner of intimidating him as a witness at the regular weekly noise demo. Funnily enough Hills wasn't available at the time and the court heard that he was flying to the U.S. Perhaps we should spare a thought for Paul standing right now in front of ITTs board explaining how a bunch of goddam two-bit limey punks were able to smash his factory up with hammers and walk out of court smiling.
The answer is that Paul Hill's evidence was more full of holes than his factory's windows. Here's just a few edited highlights of five days of his cross-examination.
Hills revealed that the company have owned the rights to the main bomb rack used on Israeli F-16s - the VER-2 - since 1998. He admitted removing website evidence of his company's dealings with Israel as early as 2004, the date of the first protests. He admitted having interfered with the crime scene, retrieving debris and papers, before police photographers arrived. He claimed to have police permission but no police statement backed him up. There has been speculation that £189,000 is actually an underestimate of the damage caused and that more controversial evidence may have been spirited away. After being warned at one stage by the judge that he was at risk of perjuring himself if he contradicted evidence he'd produced in earlier court cases, crucially he ended by admitting that anyone looking at the evidence presented to him in court would form the reasonable belief that his company was involved in arms sales to Israel.
It was this that the defendants needed to convince the jury of - that there was an obvious link between this factory and the bombardment of Gaza.
A witness, Sharyn Lock, provided the background necessary for the jury to understand the full scope of the horror then unfolding in Gaza. Now a trainee midwife, in 2009 she was a human-rights volunteer in Al-Quds hospital, Gaza City. She was in the Gaza strip for the whole of Operation Cast Lead, and able to show footage of a missile strike on the hospital, just metres from the maternity ward. The jury also saw news reports of the white phosphorus attacks on the UNWRA compound, which incinerated much-needed food and medicine. Sharyn closed her evidence by saying she had no doubt that those who armed the Israeli Air Force 'had the blood of children on their hands'.
After hearing of the verdict she told SchNEWS "Brilliant news. I am so proud not only of the eight UK civilians who risked their liberty to protect fellow civilians whom they may never meet - but also of the jury who recognised that it is everyone's responsibility to uphold international law, even if that means decommissioning the weapons."
By the time this went to print the news of the verdict was spreading. Right-wing nutjob and Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips was first in with her considered opinion on 'the ignorance and bigotry of the judge'. The Israeli ambassador was crying foul saying that it was 'not a great era of the British system' (sic) - according to Israeli news source he was reportedly 'furious' at the judges 'blatant anti-semitic stand'. Even David Icke put it up on his website.
On the more positive side, the decommissioners were congratulated by Noam Chomsky, who said "I would like to express my respect and admiration for those who are undertaking non-violent resistance to oppose British participation in Israel's cruel crimes in Gaza".
So what next for Smash EDO? Unable to extract any usable quotes from the after-verdict party at the Community Garden, SchNEWS spoke to an increasingly bleary eyed Andrew Beckett, press spokesman for the campaign: "When we first started banging pots and pans outside the factory back in 2004, we never believed we'd get anywhere like this. EDO must be reeling, their dirty laundry is now flapping out there for the whole world to see. We're not to going to let up the pressure on this factory - watch this space".
For more see smashedo.org.uk | Decommissioners website
* There will be a victory demo to celebrate the EDO decommissioners' acquittal this Monday (July 5th) from 12 noon outside EDO/ITT on Home Farm Road, Brighton.
* View these movies of the trial: The opening day of the trial | The day of the first verdicts"Every Fucking Week!!"
Short reportage of a recent incident at the bomb component making factory EDO/ITT in Brighton during one of the regular weekly noise demos. Just goes to show how much a few bods and a camera can pile on the pressure...
Download hi-res Mpeg (108 meg) click here
Download low-res FLV (33 meg) click here
