March 6, 2008

Woman Accused in Activists' Attack on U. of Washington Facility Is Convicted of Arson

Seattle — A woman charged with taking part in one of a string of attacks by the Earth Liberation Front, including a 2001 arson at the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture, has been found guilty of two charges of arson and faces a prison sentence of up to five years on each charge, The Seattle Times reported.

But after a three-week trial in the U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Wash., jurors deadlocked on three other charges, including the most serious one, which was connected with the use of a “destructive device” in a crime of violence and which alone carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years.

The defendant, Briana Waters, a 32-year-old music teacher who has a 3-year-old daughter, was a student at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Wash., at the time of the attack on the Seattle horticultural-research facility. Prosecutors say she served as a lookout during the raid in the early-morning hours of May 21, 2001, while four accomplices attacked the horticulture facility with a firebomb set with a timer that caused the device to ignite soon afterward.

Two of the four alleged accomplices testified against Ms. Waters as part of plea-bargaining agreements. They face prison terms likely to be between three and seven years.

According to charges and admissions as part of plea bargains, the attack was one of more than 20 carried out by members of an underground group known as the Earth Liberation Front from 1996 to 2001 on commercial and academic facilities. Federal officials have estimated the damage caused in those attacks at $40-million.

A nine-year investigation of those attacks has resulted in arrests and plea bargains by a dozen defendants. Ms. Waters is the only accused person who has gone to trial.

In the case of the University of Washington horticulture-research center, the saboteurs were misinformed about the kind of research that was taking place. They believed researchers there were conducting genetic engineering of poplar trees, but the scientists were working on hybridization of poplars using centuries-old cross-pollination techniques.

The university rebuilt the facility at a cost of $7-million and reopened it in 2004. —Peter Monaghan

Comments

1. I hope this terrorist gets a long sentence – if for no other reason, than to protect her young daughter from her mother’s poison.

   — Profet    Mar 6, 05:05 PM    #

2. A lookout? Is there no sense that she didn’t have a very good lawyer? Her collaborators cut deals and she goes away…small potatoes.

   — DJP    Mar 6, 06:28 PM    #

3. I am no less angry with these clowns than is Profet, but I wonder just what this woman thought she was getting into. My sense is that she got swept up in the excitement of this sort of subversive ELF movement and thought it was a good cause and good fun. Now she’s learned how serious this is. It’s a shame that her daughter has to see her mom go to jail, but it’s sadder that mom got involved, seven years ago, in something that seemed meaningful but was really just criminal. And then she will take a bigger fall than the main perpetrators, as DJP notes—sad. I hope she’s learned a lesson, somehow.

   — Tom B.    Mar 6, 08:49 PM    #

4. Yeah, just good, clean fun them ELFs, huh? Kids will be kids. What say we just let them all go…that is, right after they’ve served their sentences and have repaid the $40 million.

   — Ron    Mar 6, 11:15 PM    #

5. Activist? Using arson to intimidate and frighten people who do not believe as you do so that they conform to your will. No, there is a word for that, and it is not activism.

   — Larry    Mar 7, 02:00 AM    #

6. It’s a very seductive yet poisonous arguement that if you have a special thought form when you commit arson it is somehow excusable. That would leave many in the academy in a privleged position to do what they want with no regard to others.

   While this person was clearly young and stupid when she did this, given the damage some time seems appropriate. The only unfortunate part of this story is that the lookout got more punishment than those who set the fire. That you can blame on a bad lawyer.

   — Kitty    Mar 7, 06:22 AM    #

7. For man has invented his doom. First step was touching the moon.
   —-Bob Dylan

   — marci    Mar 7, 11:33 AM    #

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