Prosecutor likens anti-logging arsonists to KKK
EUGENE – Defense attorneys expressed outrage Tuesday when federal prosecutors compared Earth Liberation Front arsonists who were trying to stop old growth logging and the slaughter of wild horses to Ku Klux Klansmen who burned black churches in the South.
“I cannot sit idly by and hear what these defendants did compared to acts of the Ku Klux Klan burning empty churches,” when the KKK also burned a church where four young black girls died, and was involved in lynchings and murders, defense attorney Amanda Lee said in U.S. District Court.
The exchange came in a hearing where federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken to declare the string of 20 arsons in five Western states by a cell of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front to be terrorist acts, qualifying the defendants for longer sentences under federal guidelines.
The six men and four women have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and arson in connection with fires set from 1996 through 2001 that did $40 million in damage to a Vail, Colo., ski resort, national forest ranger stations, meat packing plants, research laboratories, lumber company offices, a tree farm and an SUV dealership.
Aiken said because each of the defendant’s crimes and circumstances is different, she was unlikely to rule before next Tuesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer argued that the fires qualified as terrorism under the law, because they were intended to coerce the government to change its policies on logging, selling wild horses for slaughter and genetic engineering.
“This is a classic case of terrorism, despite their protests of lofty humane goals,” Peifer said. “It was pure luck no one was killed or injured by their actions.”
Defense attorneys replied that the fires do not qualify as terrorism because the defendants took great care to be sure no one was killed or injured.
“If that is the standard, then the Ku Klux Klan did not commit terrorism,” when they burned empty black churches during the civil rights upheaval in the South in the 1960s, Peifer said.
Defense lawyer Bill Sharp said a history of legislation creating the terrorism enhancement clearly shows Congress meant it to be applied to cases where people were killed, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.