‘This is not a political trial it is a criminal trial’ – so sing Judge and Prosecution in harmony
I promised in my last blog to provide an update on the trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court in which I’m charged, together with 5 others, with having in my possession ‘articles withintent to destroy or damage’ property belonging to Elbit.
I was
informed by my barrister, Danielle Manson from Garden Court Chambers that the
reason why I am the lead defendant is because of my blog
of two years ago! A rare honour indeed. No
doubt I shall be cross-examined on every word and past participle.
There is
one theme that Judge Chambers and Prosecutor Deborah Gould are agreed on and
that is that this trial has nothing to do with politics. It’s only about criminal conduct and criminal
damage in particular.
If Chambers
and Gould are to be believed, then 6 people, most of whom did not even know
each other beforehand, conspired to engage in a spot of vandalism on the
morning of March 9th for no other reason than that they felt in a
destructive mood. Quite why we didn’t focus on breaking a few windows nearer
home or vandalizing a phone box is one of life’s mysteries.
Six members of the German Jewish Resistance Group in Nazi Germany Who in May 1942 set fire to Goebbel's Soviet Paradise Exhibition in Berlin's Lustgarten. They had broken the law and were beheaded. According to Judge and Prosecutor in the trial, adherence to the law is a supreme value
There is
therefore a deliberate attempt to exclude or play down the real reasons for
what happened, i.e. the role of Elbit in manufacturing drones such as Hermes
450 which has been responsible for the death of thousands of Palestinian civilians,
to say nothing of its supply of drones to the Indian army for use in Kashmir
and its supply of weaponry to the genocidal junta in Burma.
Herbert Baum - executed leader of the German Jewish anti-Nazi Baum Group - died under torture
Jo
Wadsworth, the Blairite co-editor of the Brighton & Hove News published
an article on the case today. No doubt she and the Editor of the Jewish
Chronicle are salivating at the prospect of me being convicted!
Today the
jury was whittled down from 18 to 12. It was thus only on the afternoon of the
fourth day of trial that the Prosecution opened its case with lurid tales of
conspiracies and plots. Factually she was all at sea despite copious amounts of
information supplied by mobile phone companies on our whereabouts on the night
of March 8/morning of March 9.
Thus I was supposed to have left Brighton
at 5.30 when I picked up the van and arrived by 9.30. In fact I didn’t leave Brighton
until about 7.30 and didn’t arrive until after midnight. Just a small point but
it shows the sloppiness of the Prosecution despite the massive powers of search
they have under the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Demonstration March 29th outside Shenstone's factory in Walsall
Thus
tomorrow (Friday) the trial begins proper as the Prosecution opens its case.
However as Judge Chambers has other business, sentencing a rapist and murderer
in the afternoon, there will only be a short session from 10.00-12.00.
Thus ends
the first week. The second week will consist of only 3 days because of Easter
and the third week will be four days because of Easter Monday so this trial is
likely to continue into the third week of April.
However
this also gives people time to mobilize around the issues in the case, which is
the right to take action against those who deliberately flout international
human rights law in search of profit. Britain is signed up to the UN and European
Human Rights Conventions but they are observed in the breach and a blind eye is
turned to arms exports by Britain.
In June
2019 the Court of Appeal held
that the government’s export of arms to Saudia Arabia to be unlawful. Foreign
Secretary Liz Truss blithely ignored
the ruling and proceeded regardless. It was all a ‘mistake’ she said. Not a defence I suspect we will be able to
use.
Tony Greenstein
This blog
has been legally vetted and there are a number of things I have been forced to
omit for legal reasons which will become clear later