Referat og afsluttende tale fra retssag mod irske plovjernsaktivister

der ville forhindre bombedrab på mennesker i krig mod Irak i 2003.

Fra Coilín ÓhAiseadha < aatchoo.2005@besked.com >

….

En god og dygtig oversætterkollega ved navn Frank Grevil påpeger, at det angelsaksiske begreb, der hedder "lawful excuse" ligner det danske begreb, der hedder "nødret". 
 
Og jeg har fået noget mere i mellemtiden - navnlig en meget bevægende afsluttende tale fra én af forsvarsadvokaterne. 
 
Hermed sender jeg derfor: 
1. rettet dansk opsummering af Liberty Belles referat fra retssagen; 
2. link til den amerikanske journalist Liberty Belles oprindelige referat på engelsk; 
3. definitioner af retsbegreberne; 
4. afskrift af forsvarsadvokat Brendan Nix’ afsluttende tale. Meget bevægende. Det siges, at Nix er én af de få irske advokater, der stadigvæk udøver den klassiske talekunst og denne tale er i hvert fald et godt eksempel på det; 
5. oplysninger om, hvordan man kan give et støttebidrag til at dække de anklagedes udgifter. 
 
Mange kærlige hilsner 
Coilín. 
 
 
1. Dansk opsummering af Liberty Belles referat fra retssagen 
 
Nedenfor findes et link til journalisten Liberty Belles meget velskrevede referat fra retssagen i Dublin mod de fem “plovjernsaktivister”, der den 5. februar 2003 satte et amerikansk militærfly ved lufthavnen Shannon i Vestirland ud af stand til at medvirke til invasionen i Irak. Og hermed på dansk nogle af de mest interessante punkter fra advokaternes opsummering: 
 
Der er ikke meget uenighed om, hvad aktivisterne har gjort, da de har tilstået, at de har banket på flyet med håndbårne redskaber med henblik på at sætte det ud af stand til at flyve. Debatten i retssagen drejer sig derfor mere om, hvordan lovgivningen skal fortolkes i forhold til en handling, der muligvis har forhindret den amerikanske krigsmaskine i at buldre ind og myrde folk i Irak. 
 
** Lawful excuse 
Dommeren har denne gang tilladt, at forsvaret henviser til et begreb, der hedder "lawful excuse", hvorved man i visse tilfælde ikke bliver dømt for at gøre skade på gods, hvis hensigten er at beskytte liv eller ejendom. Dette angelsaksiske retsbegreb ligner det danske begreb, der hedder “nødret” og er udtrykkeligt nævnt i den lov, i henhold til hvilken de fem plovjernsaktivister er tiltalt. 
 
Dette forsvar forsøgte dommeren i sagen sidste oktober/november at udelukke ved at påstå, at visse objektive kriterier ikke var opfyldt, som ellers ville gøre det gældende. 
 
Retssagen dengang faldt som bekendt sammen, da forsvaret afslørede, at Præsident Bush havde haft dommeren med som middagsgæst i forbindelse med sin indvielse i januar 2001. Dommeren så sig nødsaget til at trække sig fra sagen, da man ellers kunne have fået den opfattelse, at han i kraft af sit venskab med George W. Bush ikke var upartisk. Sagen havde jo, som forsvaret dengang påpegede, meget med Præsident Bushs personlighed at gøre. 
 
Det er en stor sejr for forsvarsadvokaterne, at de denne gang har overtalt dommeren til at tillade dette forsvar. 
 
** Årsag-virkning 
Man har i løbet af sagen afhørt et militært vidne, en tidligere officer i det britiske kongelige luftvåben (RAF) og ekspert i den militære logistik, der hedder Geoffrey Oxlee, som har påpeget, at en afbrydelse af logistikken kan have en afgørende betydning for krigsførelsen. Den tyske modoffensiv i Belgien i 1944 gik fx. i stå, fordi tyskerne løb tør for benzin til deres køretøjer. 
 
Én af forsvarsadvokaterne har påpeget, at anklageren har hverken forsøgt at tilbagevise Oxlees vidneførsel eller indkaldt nogen eksperter, der kunne tilbagevise hans vidneførsel om, at aktivisternes handling kan have reddet liv og ejendom ved at forhindre flyet i at bidrage til logistikken omkring invasionen i Irak. 
 
Anklageren har ved at henvise til den såkaldte kaosteori forsøgt at så tvivl om, hvorvidt aktivisternes handling kan have haft nogen forudsigelig virkning, men forsvarsadvokaterne har påpeget, at bevisbyrden som altid i et angelsaksisk retssystem ligger på anklageren. Byrden ligger ikke på forsvaret at bevise, at handlingen har virket efter hensigten; den ligger på anklageren at bevise, at handlingen _kunne ikke_ have reddet liv eller ejendom. 
 
Hvis juryen er i tvivl om årsag-virkningskæden, så må den frikende de fem anklagede. 
 
** Urimelig lovgivning? 
Det kan godt være, at anklageren synes, at det er urimeligt, at loven lægger op til, at folk selv forsøger at håndhæve loven, men sådan er den nuværende irske lovgivning og hvis han mener, at den skal ændres, så bør han i forsvarets mening diskutere sagen med Justitsministeren. 
 
** Ulovlig krig 
Iøvrigt, man måtte gerne huske, at langt de fleste folkeretseksperter - bortset fra enkelte amerikanske jurister - mener, at invasionen i Irak var ulovlig. Det er i denne sammenhæng, at én af de anklagede har sagt: "Jeg tog ikke til Shannon for at begå en forbrydelse; jeg tog til Shannon for at forebygge en forbrydelse." 
 
** Domsafsigelse 
Dommeren har i dag (fredag den 21/7.) opsummeret anklagerens side af sagen for juryen. På mandag skal hun opsummere forsvarets side af sagen og det er muligt at juryen vil komme tilbage allerede mandag aften og sige, at de fem skal frikendes. Ellers kan det meget godt være, at der opstår en såkaldt "hung jury", hvorved de 12 ikke kan blive enige. Domstolen kan i dette tilfælde tillade et 11-1 eller 10-2 flertal. 
 
Det kommer ikke som nogen overraskelse, om aktivisterne bliver fængslet. Det er jo noget, der har været med i deres overvejelser fra starten og det bliver i givet fald startskuddet for en anden type kampagne. 
 
Men, når alt er taget i betragtning, regner jeg med, at de bliver frikendt. 
 
 
2. Den amerikanske journalist Liberty Belles oprindelige referat på engelsk
 
Ploughshares Trial - Closing Arguments
category national | anti-war | news report 
Thursday July 20, 2006 19:21 
author by Liberty Belle 
 
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77368 
 
 
3. Definitioner af retsbegreber: 
 
"Without lawful excuse. 
... (2) A person charged with an offence to which this section applies shall ... be treated for those purposes as having a lawful excuse- 
... ( c ) if he damaged or threatened to damage the property in question ... in order to protect himself or another or property belonging to himself or another ... and, at the time of the act or acts alleged to constitute the offence, he believed 
 (i) that he or that other or the property, right or interest was in immediate need of protection, and 
  (ii) that the means of protection adopted or proposed to be adopted were or would be reasonable having regard to all the circumstances." 
 
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZA31Y1991S6.html 
 
nødret: 
Definition 
retten til under visse omstændigheder at begå en strafbar handling, når den har været nødvendig til afværgelse af truende skade på person eller gods, og lovovertrædelsen må anses for at være af forholdsvis underordnet betydning 
Reference  
Krüger Andersen et al: Dansk Privatret, Jurist-og Økonomforbundets Forlag, 9. Udgave
 
http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller 
 
 
4. Forsvarsadvokat Brendan Nix’ afsluttende tale 
 
REPORT OF CLOSING SPEECH TO THE JURY BY DEFENSE BARRISTER MR. NIX, ACTING ON BEHALF OF KAREN FALLON
 
"Mr. Devally dumbed himself down and damned us with faint praise!" 
 
I looked up the word "parable" in the dictionary and learned it referred to a short story, said Mr Nix.
 
Then Mr. Nix offered a parable.
 
A young student is a baggage handler working at an airport. He overhears a conversation in which a man speaking on the phone says that at a certain time on a certain Airbus plane, when it takes off, "the door will fall off and kill the bastard." The student thinks to himself what should he do and he runs to the plane and deflates the tyre so that it can't take off, and the person will not be killed. 
When they check the doors of the plane there's nothing wrong with it.
But a few days later, another plane takes off and the door does fall off and kills the fellow. 
 
Mr. Devally has said the action of these defendants was a political act.
I'll tell you of some one who made a great political speech, the greatest political speech of all time and that's Jesus Christ. And the name of the political speech he made was "The Sermon on the Mount". You'll find it in Matthew chapter 5.verses 3 to 10. 
 
This is what it says:
 
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land.
Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall
have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven".
 
These are the words of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and Jesus is one of the greatest pacifists that ever lived on this earth.
 
Now Lebanon is burning. Today, children swimming in a pool were bombed. A
swimming pool is now filled with burning children. 
This is war. 
People in Gaza are suffering and children dying.
 
Now, I ask you: Would you take an axe to destroy an Israeli plane or a Hizbullah rocket?
 
We may ask: "What is good?" Forrest Gump's mother has the answer: "Good is as good does."
 
Today there are a lot of a la carte Catholics. They go to the sacraments for weddings and baptisms. The children make their first Communion. They go to confession now and then. They pick and choose. 
 
The trouble is, these people here (these defendants) believe what they are saying.
 
To work in a wet hostel - that's not easy.
 
The Commandments can all be summed up in one maxim: Love God and your
neighbour.
If everyone followed this Commandment, there would be no war. 
 
You have been given in evidence of an uncontested statistic: more than 500,000 children under 5 years of age killed by the sanctions in Iraq. If one thousand children had been so killed in Ireland, there would be outrage. 
 
There's another statistic uncontested: 1.5 million people died in Iraq because of the UN sanctions. That's a quarter of the number who were killed in the Holocaust.
 
Now I want to ask you: If you knew and cared, would you do something? 
 
Christ went to Gethsemane. These five went to Glenstal.
 
Madeleine Albright's most recent quote is in Newsweek magazine. She says that the US War in Iraq will be seen as the worst foreign policy failure in US history. 
 
What would rise you to action? 
 
If a child's plastic ball rolled into the street and the child ran after it, would you leave it to the Garda to go after the child?
 
Or if a child's beach ball went into the water, and the child went into the water and risked drowning, would you leave it to the life guards. 
 
If a child has both knees cut, would you leave it to the parents to bring the child to the Outpatients? If a woman's handbag is snatched, would you help her or just leave it to
the Garda?
 
If it happened on a bus, would you intervene or leave it to the bus driver?
 
What would drive you to action?
 
All of us may have lost parents. Suppose my father has died and I come out of the mortuary to hear people having a silly argument about a matter of no importance. Nobody knows of my father's death. You begin to think about what is important. To get a sense of proportion. 
 
Iraqis have died. And these people here are such believers and have such honestly held beliefs that for them there are no strangers.
 
You get a sense of proportion.
 
If someone was grieving, would you go over to them and share your own grief with them?
 
I was in a park today and two children were being followed by a duck. There was the sound of children playing in the yard close by - children playing in a yard . . . and a band was playing. And there was no drunkenness. 
 
A sound of universal happiness is the sound of children playing.
 
At that same time, Lebanon and Hezbollah were hammering the shite ... 
 
And I asked myself: "What right have I to be happy?" 
Where is our shared humanity? 
If anyone of us is cut, do we not bleed?
 
I am a free-born man because others made sacrifices. If there are more who make sacrifices there will be more free people and there will. be an end to war.
The people who gave me my freedom were treated as treasonous people.
 
My clients didn't go in to the airport with bombs or guns. 
You heard the Sergeant give evidence that Ciaron O'Reilly went over to comfort him when he was in shock. 
 
Yet Mr. Devally says an emergency is needed.
 
People have been rendered for torture. 
 
We heard lies about weapons of mass destruction. Lies.
 
We heard there were prisoners in shackles. In Shannon recently, one prisoner was found on a US plane in shackles and they said, "Oh, that's one of our own." How can we believe them? 
 
Was the action of the five defendants a publicity stunt? NO.
 
We get statistics about the number of US and UK soldiers killed but we don't hear the number of Iraqis killed in the war. 
 
Then you hear this phrase "collateral damage" - a pornographic phrase. Anyone who uses this phrase has no respect for human life, they have no regret and they are prepared to do it again and again. 
 
These planes were going through our airport to war in Iraq.
 
What motivated our Catholic Workers to damage a plane with obvious damage? Karen Fallon wants world peace. She acted out of conscience to decommission a warplane
 
She comes back out of conscience to her trial because she said she would.
 
Should people who act out of conscience be labelled as having extreme views?
 
Bound by her conscience, she was moved to actions. 
 
I ask the Jury for an acquittal. 
 
 
5. Vedr. støttebidrag: 
*Pengene kan overføres til:
Ploughshares Defence Fund, Bank of Ireland, Ballygall Rd., Finglas, Dublin 11, IRLAND 
IBAN: IE18BOFI90055118972983 
BIC No./Switch Code: BOFIIE2D 
 
*Checks udstedt til 'Ploughshares Defence Fund' kan sendes til: 
c/o Ploughshares Defence Fund, 134 Phibsborough Rd. Dublin 7, IRLAND 

(videresendt