[News] Ashcroft Loses Controversial Prosecution

[News at freedomarchives.org]

May 20, 2004
Ashcroft Loses Controversial Prosecution Against NGO
by Jim Lobe

In a rebuke to the U.S. Justice Department, a federal judge in Miami has 
thrown out a criminal case against environmental group 
<http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/>Greenpeace, a prosecution that 
was watched closely by other progressive organizations that say they are 
under threat from the Bush administration.

U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan acquitted the group at the end of the 
prosecution's case Wednesday, the third day of the jury trial, for 
protesting against a ship that carried 70 tons of illegally cut mahogany. 
He said the prosecution, which based the action on an obscure 1872 law, had 
failed to provide enough evidence for the case to go to the jury.

"America's tradition of free speech won a victory today," said John 
Passacantando, Greenpeace executive director, "but our liberties are still 
not safe. The Bush administration and its allies seem bent on stifling our 
tradition of civil protest, a tradition that has made our country stronger 
throughout our history."

The case, which marked the first time a non-governmental organization (NGO) 
had been indicted by the federal government for the protest activities of 
its members, drew considerable national and even international attention. 
Former Vice President Al Gore and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy were among 
a number of prominent individuals and groups that protested the prosecution.

It was triggered by an April 2002 protest in which two volunteers from a 
Greenpeace vessel boarded the APL Jade cargo ship, which was carrying the 
mahogany from Brazil toward the Port of Miami.

Just a few months before, President George W Bush himself publicly 
committed Washington to help developing countries prevent illegal logging 
of mahogany, and the two activists who boarded the ship unfurled a banner 
that read, "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging."

The two activists, as well as the four others in the Greenpeace boat, were 
arrested when they came into port, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and 
spent a weekend in jail.

But fifteen months later, the Justice Department filed an indictment in 
Miami against Greenpeace itself under the 1872 law, which had last been 
used in 1890.

The statute was originally intended to keep houses of prostitution and rum 
shops from luring sailors on incoming ships to shore with promises of women 
and grog, and the judge decided the case on a technicality.

As the boarding took place about six miles from port, according to Jordan, 
it did not meet the statutory requirement that it was "about to arrive," 
suggesting that he might have ruled differently on the motion to dismiss 
had the boat been much closer when the protest occurred. "Caveat emptor," 
he warned the defendant in reference to future protests.

But Passacantando and other activists were unrepentant. "Greenpeace will 
never let up in its defense of our planet," he said, while Greenpeace's 
general counsel, Tom Wetterer, said the ruling was "a message that the 
government can't just throw any charge at an organization to silence (it)."

According to Howard Simon, director of the Florida branch of the American 
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "the fact (that the prosecutors) get bounced 
out of court within two and a half days, does that indicate at all that the 
case was ill-conceived from the start?"

Still, the case has been taken very seriously among progressive NGOs that 
have been increasingly under attack by both the administration and various 
groups closely allied with it.

For example, the neo-conservative <http://www.aei.org/>American Enterprise 
Institute (AEI) and the <http://www.fed-soc.org/>Federalist Society for Law 
and Public Policy Studies launched a <http://www.ngowatch.org/>new website 
last June to monitor the activities and internal structure of more than 100 
international NGOs, including Greenpeace, that they accuse of pursuing a 
"globalist agenda" at the expense of U.S. sovereignty or national interest.

"There is this falsehood that (these NGOs) are somehow from the 
grassroots," said Danielle Pletka, an AEI vice president, at a Federalist 
Society meeting last November. "That is an untruth."

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and other administration officials, 
particularly former Federalist Society members around Attorney General John 
Ashcroft, have also spoken out strongly against certain NGOs that they 
consider to be working against the administration's policies.

The Justice Department had insisted the Greenpeace prosecution was not 
politically motivated but was undertaken only to prevent people from 
illegally attempting to board ships near the Port of Miami or threaten port 
security. The port denied berthing space for Greenpeace boats after the 
indictment was filed.

But NGO supporters of Greenpeace doubted that explanation.

"I'm not naïve enough to think the government will cease its efforts to 
suppress dissent," said the ACLU's Simon, while Mitch Bernard, litigation 
director of the <http://www.nrdc.org/>Natural Resources Defense Council 
(NRDC), told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "The government is full of 
cards it can play if it wants to continue to stifle dissent."

"Unfortunately, I don't see any reason for believing this is the end. 
Non-profit groups and advocates need to be on their guard for this sort of 
thing."

[]



Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2617


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