Trident Ploughshares, 17. november 2000:
Call to Trident Judges to Face the Obvious
The Lord Advocate's Reference, which has reviewed the Trident Three
trial,
has concluded today with the judgment expected in the next four to
eight
weeks.
Amicus curiae Gerry Moynihan countered the Crown assertion that
although
the women claimed that they were responding to an imminent threat,
they had
not done so immediately. He gave the analogy of a person who discovers
that
his neighbour is a terrorist and has prepared a bomb. He asks the
police to
act but to no avail. He decides to act himself but does not do so
during
the night since that would be too risky. He breaks in next day to his
neighbour's house and disarms the bomb.
Later, on behalf of Ulla Roder, Advocate Ian Anderson said that there
were
no cases in Scottish law which could illustrate the Maytime situation
adequately. Instead he turned to an American Ploughshares case, that
of
Daniel Berrigan and others, which gave the court better guidance on
necessity as a defence.
QC Aidan O'Neill, on behalf of Ellen Moxley, submitted that with the
limited facts about Trident that the Court had had before it, it was
still
possible for it to find that Trident was legal but they had been given
no
evidence to allow them to rule that it was legal. Dealing with another
Crown claim that the humanitarian principles only applied to wartime
he
explained that the formulation of these principles was an affirmation
that
basic human rights applied even in wartime. It went without saying
that
people had a right to life in peacetime.
A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said: "The judges did not allow
the
full evidence to be presented at this hearing, but even with that
restriction the basic case against Trident has come through. That case
is
so strong and we ask the bench to admit the obvious and rule it
unlawful."
tridentploughshares.org