AR-News: Important legal info re emailing against vivisection

[סמדר]

PLEASE CROSS-POST THIS IMPORTANT INFO:
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 5:25 PM

Police attempting to bluff campaigners over HLS related emails

It has come to our attention that the police working on behalf of the 
customers of HLS who have taken out injunctions against protests are over 
stretching themselves in their interpretations of its terms and attempting 
to harass activists on behalf of their masters. This article gives you the 
information to unmask their tricks and keep yourself safe from them.

Please read all of it, as it is not hard to see through their smokescreen 
once you have been forewarned. It is desperation on their part, and highly 
dubious behaviour, so it is even more important that people stand up for 
their basic human right to protest. At the bottom we also include some notes 
about not breaching the injunction itself, and the dates they were issued 
on.

The Tactics
Several police officers, notably among them Mike Nasser and DC Davidson of 
Lancashire police, have been asking people to attend police stations, to be 
informed that they have harassed Asahi Glass and other companies, or broken 
the injunctions. They are using this to get information and cautions out of 
people, and to try and intimidate protestors from continuing legitimate 
actions against these animal abusers.

What makes this an abuse of process is that they are using emails, letters 
and phone calls sent before the injunctions were in place to justify their 
claims.  They are also to some degree stretching and interpreting the 
Harassment Act to fit their needs, leading them to make some very dubious 
claims in its name. Note, they use both the injunctions and the Harassment 
Act in their arguments, and often, wrongly, confuse the two.

Seeing through the smoke
Firstly, for the vast majority of people these communications (sent BEFORE 
the injunctions were in place) were polite and legitimate. They would not 
amount to harassment with or without the injunction.

Only if you have repeatedly communicated with an individual over a number of 
occasions with the intention of causing fear or intimidation, or in an 
aggressive manner would it amount to harassment. They are going to be hard 
pressed to say that a few polite emails or letters fall into this category.

Secondly, as long as they were sent before the injunction was granted they 
do not amount to a breach of the injunction itself. And if they were sent 
after the injunction was granted, the police would still have to show that 
the individual concerned actually knew about the injunction and what it 
contained first. Nasser and Davidson are very good at considering breaking 
the injunction and causing harassment as being the same thing, when in fact 
they are two different offences.

This is the most important point. The injunction does cover types of 
peaceful protest that would not normally be against the law, but unless 
someone has been served with it directly or indirectly then they cannot be 
said to be in breach of it. This means that someone who has not been served 
is not breaking the law by making a phone call or sending an email to make 
polite complaints, contrary to what F2 Chemicals, or other companies may 
tell you when you contact them.

In the case of the Japanese customers the injunction does still permit 
polite calls to the switchboard, not withstanding what they or the police 
may tell you otherwise.

Where they know they cannot use the injunction, they are attempting to use 
the Harassment Act directly. They are on even more dubious territory here. 
See our legal guide for more information on the Harassment Act, but they 
have to show that by sending the communications you intended to actually 
harass the employees directly, which a polite email asking them to stop 
dealing with HLS is hardly going to amount to!

Tips to protect yourself
So, if a pair of Lancashire's finest pork pie eaters makes demands of you, 
here are some tips to keep you safe:

1) FIRST, EMAIL US BEFORE YOU SAY ANYTHING TO THEM OR AGREE TO MEET THEM - 
WE WILL REPLY TO YOU STRAIGHT AWAY

2) CALL A FRIENDLY SOLICITOR FOR ADVICE; for more details see the last page 
of the legal guide for activists at www.freebeagles.org, or email 
info at freebeagles.org for a copy.

3) Unless they are summoning you to answer police bail or actually arresting 
you, you do not have to go to the police station.

4) If you do go to the police station, make sure you have a friendly 
solicitor with you, not a duty one who is ignorant of these particular 
issues.

5) You do NOT have to give a statement. In most cases it is best that you 
don't.

6) Do not believe their lies and do not be bullied into accepting cautions 
or making statements. If the communications the police discuss were sent 
before the injunction was granted, then you have not breached it. Sending 
polite emails to staff about their company's involvement with HLS does not 
amount to harassment, no matter how much they threaten you with arrest.

It is possible that if you have written more than one email to the same 
person, you may be arrested and charged with harassment even for writing 
polite emails. This is because the police are saying that writing more than 
one email amounts to harassment. However, they know this is not true and it 
is simply a part of their campaign of intimidation. So long as the emails 
were polite and not threatening, the charges will be dropped and you will 
then be able to sue for false imprisonment. The important thing is not to 
let them frighten you. See our guide on what to do at the police station at 
www.freebeagles.org for more advice on dealing with them.

7) If they over step the mark, sue or put a complaint in. These men need to 
realise that they are not going to be able to bully the animal rights 
movement in such as crass way, or intimidate us from our basic human right 
to protest.

Remember, these coppers are acting purely on behalf of the companies in a 
desperate effort to show that they are making headway against protests 
directed against the animal abusers. The law is secondary to them, and they 
are bending the truth on behalf of these HLS customers.  What matters is 
that the campaign is successful, and that they are trying to suppress action 
precisely because of this.

Just say NO.

A photo of one of these 'coppers' can be found at 
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284634.html

Please pass this article on to any other animal rights contacts you may 
have. It is important that people are not caught out by these police tricks. 
For more information on your rights, please visit 
http://www.freebeagles.org/ or email info at freebeagles.org

Notes on the Breaching the Injunctions
You are not breaching of the injunction unless you have been served with it, 
or it can be shown you have knowledge of its restrictions. But, if bailiffs 
have attempted to serve people on a demo, then the police will treat them as 
having been served and arrest them accordingly if they breach it. Those 
arrested will then have to argue in court that they had a "reasonable 
excuse" to breach the injunction - e.g. that they had not read it or did not 
understand it. This has worked well as a defence where civil injunctions 
(Section 3 of the Harassment Act) such as these were used against fur 
protestors. It's also worth noting that Section 3 is an either way offence - 
that is you are entitled to a jury trial, which is another reason why the 
cops are not be keen to pursue trivial breaches.

It is important in these situations for the police / prosecution to show 
that you have been served with the injunction. Service can take the form of 
being directly served with the injunction by a bailiff at home or on a 
demonstration. Or you could also be deemed to have been indirectly served if 
evidences presented that you looked at it on the internet, something the 
police are starting to place emphasis on  - whether it is by looking at the 
SHAC website or downloading the injunction directly. The former is not 
necessarily proof, but the latter would in all probability be accepted as 
having knowledge of the injunction.

However, there is no law against keeping regularly keeping your computer 
clean and wiping any trace of the SHAC website and injunction from your 
computer. Use software tools such as Evidence Eliminator, Clean Disk 
Security, PGP and MacWasher to keep yourself protected in this fashion. In 
particular you need to keep your browser cache and history files clean. If 
in doubt, please, please feel free to get in contact with us and we can 
offer you further advice. Email us at info at freebeagles.org. Similarly, there 
is no reason why you have to keep a copy of the injunction in your house 
even if you've been served with it.

Finally, being served with one injunction does not mean you have been served 
with them all. Just because you have been photographed being served with the 
HLS injunction, does not mean you have been served with the Asahi Glass 
injunction or with any of the others.

The campaigning is obviously being effective, and that is all the more 
reason not to be intimidated and caused to stop. So if you have not broken 
the law, or the injunction, then there is no reason why you should stop. The 
police are resorting to trickery to protect these companies out of 
desperation and not a desire to uphold the law; but if you come prepared 
then there is little they can actually do.

Injunction Dates
The HLS injunction was initially ordered last April and finalised on 20th 
June 2003.

The Japanese ones were initially ordered on 13th October and finalised on 
10th November, 2003. The companies involved where Asahi Glass (including F2 
Chemicals), Daiichi, Eisai, Sankyo and Yamanouchi; but note that all were 
done individually and not as a group.

Emerson was January 2004.

The Chiron injunction was first ordered at the start of February 2004 and 
finalised on 3rd March. The Phytopharm one was also finalised on the 3rd 
March 2004.

-----------------------------
This article is for information purposes only; its aim is to let people to 
know their full rights under UK law. Nothing on these pages is absolute as 
the law is always changing; if in doubt contact a trusted solicitor for 
further advice. We do not encourage you to break the law.

Please feel free to copy and distribute these articles to fellow activists, 
but do not alter the text in any way. These articles are anti-copyright for 
non-commercial purposes. Please visit www.freebeagles.org for the latest 
version of our articles and to learn about the freeBEAGLES Ethical Open 
Document License under which this document is distributed.
If you see any errors, or we have missed any changes to the legal situation 
please contact us as soon as possible, at info at freebeagles.org, as wrong 
information can prove costly to people's freedom.

© Copyright freeB.E.A.G.L.E.S. 2004; last updated: March 2004.




Animal experiments have:
a 63% failure rate when detecting human carcinogens
a 75-95% failure rate for detecting drug side effects
a 70% failure rate for detecting drugs which cause birth defects
Success rates lower than those achieved by uneducated guesswork.

This is not science!!



Recommended website: The Absurdity of vivisection
http://vivisection-absurd.org.uk/

Information on animal research available free by EMail from 
vivisectionkills at hotmail.com

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the wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. he is in front of it - axel munthe

"Never doubt that a small group of dedicated citizens can change the world. 
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."      Margaret Mead
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