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Background on SHAC, Case, Trial, and Post-trial

Read the article below, and also check out http://www.shac7.com/case.htm and http://www.supportkevin.com/terrorist-fax.html

By Kevin Kjonaas

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty was formed in November of 1999 in England to do exactly what its name denotes, Stop Huntingdon animal cruelty. Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is one of the world's largest animal testing labs, with sites in both England and in the U.S. near Princeton, New Jersey. The company is a contract research organization and is employed by some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical, agrochemical, industrial chemical, and house-hold product manufacturing companies. Every year HLS kills (roughly and on average) about 180,000 beagle dogs, mice, primates, rabbits, cats, farm animals (goats, chickens, sheep), guinea pigs, and rats to test a range of products from diet drugs, toothpastes, tanning lotions, food supplements (like Splenda), adhesives and pesticides. The animals in the testing process, endure weeks, months, and sometimes years of isolation, poisoning, and violently invasive experiments.

HLS caught the eye of the animal rights world as far back as 1989 and most recently in the late nineties as several media organizations and large animal rights organizations (the British Union Against Vivisection and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) infiltrated the lab and documented horrendous animal cruelty. Famous footage includes of workers punching four month old beagle puppies in the face, slamming the animals into cages, violently shoving tubes down their throats, and dissecting a live and semi-conscious primate.

In the UK a successful grassroots movement prior to 1999 had mobilized thousands of ordinary people to engage in protest campaigns that saw the closure of England's last commercial cat breeder for vivisection, a large beagle breeder for vivisection (Paul McCartney aided the rescue effort), the last commercial breeder and importer of primates for vivisection, and a rabbit breeder. The campaigns saved countless thousands of lives and more importantly demonstrated that the vivisection industry was not impermeable from activist 'attacks.'

I had the good fortune to be living in London during this time and participated in many of these successful campaigns leading up to SHAC. HLS was chosen as a campaign target for a number of strategic reasons. The lab was already suffering a public relations nightmare and had shaky customer and shareholder confidence after the PETA and media exposes. The animal rights movement in the U.K. decided to really financially threaten the vivisection industry they needed to start tackling larger targets than lab animal breeders. HLS provided an opportunity at the right time and for the right reasons to shut down Europe's largest testing lab and damage the whole of the industry. The model used to shut down HLS had to be different because this campaign was not aimed at some breeders with a couple of employees, but rather a multi-national corporation with 1200 employees and the wealth ($300 billion dollars annually) of the pharmaceutical industry as its backing. Taking the South African bank boycott campaign against the Apartheid government as its example, SHAC initiated a campaign of 'tertiary' targeting. By careful research and well executed publicity campaigns SHAC was able to convince a growing number of investment firms, hedge funds, banks, insurance brokers, lab suppliers, and customers that although HLS needed their support to survive, they did not need HLS (and the baggage it brought) to profit.

The excitement of SHAC's pioneering campaign style spread like wild-fire across the grassroots community internationally. In addition to the two main organizing groups, SHAC U.K. and SHAC America (formed in May of 2001), SHAC had participating organizations in 18 different countries. In the U.S. 17 states saw local groups staging demonstrations and all fifty states had supportive members for the campaign, sending contributions or writing letters and making phone calls to campaign 'targets.' The effect has been staggering, since its inception HLS has lost 90% of its value. Companies like Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, E*Trade, HSBC, Deloitte and Touche, Marsh McLellan, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and literally hundreds of others have divested or ceased services to the failing lab due to protest and publicity pressure. HLS had to shut down one of their labs in the UK. The lab was on the brink of foreclosure twice and has only been kept open by the US and UK government intervening and unprecedently providing banking services (no western bank will give them an account) and insurance services (the U.K. government must pay the hospital costs of even the U.S. employees!). The lab has been kept financially afloat due to the multi-million dollar loans of its chairman and CEO. Today the company (re-domiciled in the U.S. in 2003 in a failed attempt to escape protest pressure, as ticker symbol LSRI) has no financial listing because no market makers will trade its shares. HLS has been booted from the London Stock Exchange, The New York Stock Exchange, and the Over the Counter Bulletin Board of the NASDAQ. It is my understanding it cannot even be found on the pink sheets right now.

USA V. SHACUSA

In May of 2004 I along with six other activists across the country were indicted by a Federal grand jury seated in New Jersey (America's medicine cabinet as it is called because of the high concentration of the pharmaceutical companies based there). The indictment charges me and the others with six counts.

The first is a law from 1992 never before tried called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (amended in 2002 to be called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act - as everything post 9-11 is an act of terrorism, apparently). The law states that whoever uses a facility in interstate commerce to physically disrupt an animal enterprise is guilty of a federal offense. In my situation the government has alleged that SHAC USA, having a website, crossed state lines for the purpose of shutting down HLS. The goal of shutting HLS would be a physical disruption and anyone who participated in this campaign is guilty of conspiracy. This count is the most troubling for me, because now a matter of case law with my conviction (pending appeal) any abolitionist campaign is a federal offense. How broad the application of this may be is frightening. Protesting for the closure of fur shops, factory farms, circuses, etc stands at risk. Large organizations like PeTA are predicted to be next on the chopping block if the government is successful in denying my appeal.

Counts two through five charge us with interstate stalking (more accurately 'cyber-stalking') because SHAC USA had a website, and that website put three people (I had never heard of until I was charged with stalking them) in fear for their lives and physical safety. You see, a large part of the SHAC campaign was an enthusiastic show of support for alternative forms of activism. SHAC USA, the incorporated organization, would cheer on electronic civil disobedience, applaud the Animal Liberation Front when they rescued beagle puppies from inside of HLS, and advocated Cindy Sheehan-styled residential picketing. The website listed the names of the companies that did business with HLS, and listed the names of the executives at those companies as well as their personal contact information. Some activists that visited the SHAC website may have used this information to write polite letters asking them to divest from the lab, while others may have used the information to stage a demonstration at the executive's doorstep. Three of the executives (out of the hundreds that happened) testified at trial that they felt having their personal information on the website, coupled with demonstrations, made them think animal rights activists (who in a 25 year history in the US have never harmed any being) would kill them and their families.

While I had never heard of the people I allegedly 'cyber-stalked', had never been to the cities where they lived, never even had the misfortune to have contacted them in any shape or form; I was a spokesperson for the U.S. SHAC campaign and was, according to the government and a jury of idiots in New Jersey, responsible for the actions of anyone who may or may not have seen the SHAC USA website.

The sixth count was of a conspiracy to violate the Federal Communications Decency Act. The government alleges that SHAC USA, this amorphous campaign, cheered on people when they would send black faxes (simple black pieces of paper) to the companies being protested to occupy the fax machines (move over Osama, SHAC is about and ready to attack your toner!). Again, the government is not alleging I or anyone that stood trial actually sent a black fax, but that we where the 'chief people' involved in organizing this campaign and are therefore responsible for anyone (who the government didn't catch) that did send a fax. The government did 'catch' one person who sent a black fax (he confessed to a grand jury that he did). At trial he testified that he got the information from a non-SHAC USA site and that was not motivated by SHAC USA to send the black fax, but motivated by anger from watching video footage of HLS employees punching a dog in the face.

The charges seem almost comical, and I treated them as such until trial thinking that I would absolutely win. After all I was not being charged with having done anything tangible. I didn't go anywhere, touch anything, hurt anyone, steal anything, or break anything. My crime, according to the government, was my speech. Speech from actual speeches I gave to audiences, and 'speech' in the form of the SHAC USA website the government is making myself and the six others 100% responsible for (never mind I can barely operate Microsoft Word let alone web-design and manipulation software).

Trial and Post-trial

Trial was a perfect storm of everything that could have gone wrong, actually going wrong. From incompetent counsel (I could go on and on about this), to a last minute replacement judge whose reputation is that she is 'intellectually slow,' and the most bizarre and prejudicial (which should have been inadmissible) testimony about protest activity that happened in other countries before SHAC USA even existed. The jury hated us from day one, and that most of them had friends or family that worked at pharmaceutical companies did not matter to the judge. In our defense we could not explain why we were opposed to animal testing, how animal rights is a political issue, or even how the first amendment covers this speech and much more beyond it.

It was an awful experience to say the least. It was very personal. The FBI had over 100 agents work on this campaign in the course of a two year investigation. 11 US attorney's offices cooperated. In 2003 my home telephone number was the biggest wire intercept target in the entire country, actual terrorism investigations included. Over 8600 of my phone calls were recorded (only 50 were played in court where I talk about protest activity and nothing illegal!), countless thousands of emails were intercepted (only about 5 of mine were shown to the jury that again, just discussed legal protests), my trash was taken for months, and myself and others were put under physical surveillance (even my attorney in LA). Trial was an extremely violating and repugnant experience that has given me a far greater appreciation to what other historical political activists had to weather through (like MLK). Trial showed me a side to the U.S. government I will never forget.

Following the jury's simple verdict of guilty on each count we were all sent to a county jail to await sentencing. After two weeks inside I was granted bail pending appeal to go to live with my mother. I am working with a new set of attorneys in preparation for the appeal, and while optimistic understand there is still much to be done.

It is my understanding that the appeal will be argued and decided within about a year and a half to two years. The issues are many for judicial error in letting in so much inadmissible, prejudicial, and hearsay testimony, to a constitutional attack on the application of the laws we have been convicted of. Also, of great importance, is legally attacking the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, and with great hope, having it be found unconstitutional on a whole, and having it taken off the books (it seeks to punish your motives, your political beliefs, instead of your actual actions.) There are of course many other legal issues that are far too complicated for me to summarize here-in that will be taken up on appeal as well.

Defeating this case is important to me for both personal and political reasons. Obviously the personal is I don't want (nor do I think I deserve) to be sent to prison. At a maximum I was be facing upwards of 27 years of Federal incarceration--I still find so frustratingly absurd seeing as I didn't do anything... I could have robbed or killed somebody and have gotten less time in jail! Politically this case must be won on appeal because it can and likely will determine how any organization in this country can legally campaign for animal rights. The large anti-animal forces that pushed for this law and this prosecution are now pushing for charges to be brought against PeTA and the Humane Society of the US. This prosecution lays the legal framework to hold criminally responsible anyone who speaks in favor of abolition or direct action. Had this type of law and ominous threat of litigation been present in the early 80's we would have never seen the emergence of groups like PeTA or Last Chance for Animals, that made not only a name for themselves off of championing the radical elements of the movement, but also a national platform for animal rights.

I want to see this appeal win, because with it I know Huntingdon will finally be foreclosed and the precedent of no matter what was thrown at this tiny grassroots movement from civil litigation, FBI harassment, federal convictions, and government bail-outs could stave off the courage of the many countless activists that would not be deterred. The lesson will be that if we can weather all of this and still come out ahead, there is no company or obstacle we can't stare down.

Help

I am temporarily politically gagged and cannot say anything to anyone about taking action to help the animals in that abysmal lab. The only other way I and the others are seeking help from people that recognize the importance of this case is by soliciting contributions to the legal defense fund. As you can imagine attorneys are expensive (especially the good ones!). I have to raise a lot of money to pay for my attorney to take care of the post-trial motions and then the appeal. I am about half-way there right now and am appreciative of anything anyone can give!

All contributions to my attorney can be tax-deductible. The New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance (NJARA, a 20 year old animal rights organization) has set up a special fund in my name that contributions can be sent through. They tender the whole amount given to my attorney. Checks can be made payable to NJARA so as long as the memo-line says "Kevin's Defense Fund." [NJARA; PO Box 174, Englishtown, NJ 07726-0174]".

Thanks for inquiring about this case and reading this article.

Very Truly Yours,

Kevin