Support The Raytheon 9 Against Malicious Prosecution

Resisting war crimes is not a crime

Nine people in Derry in Northern Ireland have been charged under terrorism laws following an occupation of the local Raytheon plant during which, police claim, £350,000 damage was done to computer equipment. The US company Raytheon is one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world, supplying guidance systems for many of the missiles and bombs used by US and Israeli forces in the Middle East. Raytheon systems guided the Qana bomb to the bunker where it blasted and crushed at least 51 people, including many children, to death.

On August 9th at 8am, protestors arrived at the building Raytheon shares with a call centre. The police were already in position. At about 8.30, an employee about to go into work hesitated for an instant and the anti-war activists rushed the door. Police started grabbing people by the scruff of the necks and literally throwing them back out. The nine now charged are those who made it into Raytheon’s premises. Once inside, the protestors erected barricades against the police and set about decommissioning the equipment. Many files thrown out the window gave the lie to the claims that the Derry plant had no connection with the arms trade.

Once local radio started to report the occupation, others started to arrive to join the protest. In the course of the day, between 80 and 100 people kept the solidarity picket going. Cars on the main road honked their horns in support. Local residents brought coffee, sandwiches and cake. Armed police in riot gear stormed the buildinng after eight hours and carried the protestors out in handcuffs. Almost all were battered and bruised in the process.

The trial of Derry Anti War Coalition activists, the Raytheon 9, is set to start on Monday May 19th. [apparently delayed now until later in the week] It is to be held in Belfast. The trial was moved to Belfast after the Prosecution Service applied to have it moved; it argued that the Derry jury pool is likely to know too much about the campaign against Raytheon, including the non-violent direct action taken on 9th August 2006 and that any jury from Derry may be too sympathetic to the action and/or intimidated by the level of support for the Raytheon 9 because of all the protests held outside the court over the almost two years since the nine were arrested.

The Derry Anti War Coalition is confident that, wherever the trial is heard, there will be large demonstrations in support of the Nine and that any jury who hears the truth about what was happening in Lebanon when the action took place cannot but find that the Nine acted to stop war crimes and, therefore, committed no crime.

Anyone wishing to support the Raytheon 9 can do so in several ways: Send a message of support to resistderry@aol.com

Organise a fundraiser for the defence fund. Spread the word about the role of the arms trade in fuelling war. If there is an arms company in your town, organise a protest at it.

Sign the online petition here.

There is more on the site http://www.raytheon9.org/ where the machinations of the British state are laid bare, clearly they are doing their utmost to fiddle a severe punishment to deter protests at the Empire’s arms corporation. There have been attempts to try without jury, moved to a less sympathetic venue, media gags and the police brutality has gone unchallenged and they are using terrorist legislation to intimidate protesters. Absolutely disgraceful. The trial is set to start this week and the more attention to this the less able the authorities will be to get away with their oppressive nonsense, so copy and disseminate! (ht2 Dave @ Complex Series of Pipes)