A U.S. District Court has thrown out the indictment of four animal rights activists who were charged with violating the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, because the government did not clearly explain what, exactly, the protesters did.

When Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope and Adriana Stumpo were arrested in 2009, prosecutors said little other than that the group allegedly chalked slogans on the sidewalk, distributed fliers and attended protests. Later, when they were officially indicted, the government was still tight-lipped about how their non-violent, above-ground protests amounted to “terrorism.”

In response, the Center for Constitutional Rights and attorney Matthew Strugar led an effort to have the indictments dismissed. In short, they argued that the charges should be dropped because they seem to involve only protected First Amendment speech, but that in order to make that argument the defendants’ speech must be clearly identified.

Here’s an excerpt from Judge Ronald M. Whyte’s ruling:

In order for an indictment to fulfill its constitutional purposes, it must allege facts that sufficiently inform each defendant of what it is that he or she is alleged to have done that constitutes a crime. This is particularly important where the species of behavior in question spans a wide spectrum from criminal conduct to constitutionally protected political protest. While “true threats” enjoy no First Amendment protection, picketing and political protest are at the very core of what is protected by the First Amendment. Where the defendants’ conduct falls on this spectrum in this case will very likely ultimately be decided by a jury. Before this case proceeds to a jury, however, the defendants are entitled to a more specific indictment setting forth their conduct alleged to be criminal. [emphasis added]

As background, a fierce campaign has been being waged in California against animal research at the University of California system. There has been a wide range of both legal and illegal tactics. Illegal tactics have included the destruction of UC vans, and an incendiary device was left at the home of a UC researcher.

The FBI and local law enforcement haven’t been able to catch the people responsible, though. They’ve only cracked down on the above-ground activists, like the AETA 4, who protest and create fliers.

The previous version of the law was used to convict the SHAC 7 for running a controversial website that posted news of both legal and illegal actions. This case, the first use of the new Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, was clearly an attempt to use this sweeping legislation even more broadly against First Amendment activity. This ruling sternly rebukes the government’s attempt to take activists to trial for “terrorism” without even explaining what they have done.

To be clear, though, this case is not over. The government can still re-indict the defendants with an amended bill of particulars that clearly outlines their alleged actions.

This is a victory worth celebrating, and it should also be inspiration for renewed organizing. Corporations and the politicians who represent them have been pushing this “eco-terrorism” and “animal enterprise terrorism” legislation for years, and they will not sit quietly as the flagship case of their pet scare-mongering law is tossed aside.

If prosecutors choose to re-indict, it should be at their own peril; the animal rights and environmental movements must be ready to respond even more loudly, more forcefully, that activism is not terrorism.

Four animal rights activists are facing charges under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act for chanting, demonstrating with masks covering their faces, and chalking defamatory slogans on the sidewalk. If convicted, the “AETA 4,”—Joseph Buddenburg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo—could be sentenced to 5-10 years in prison.

The AETA 4 case is a startling example of how federal terrorism laws are being used to create new crimes targeting political activists, and astronomically increase sentences for existing crimes. For instance, Marie Mason was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison for setting fire to empty buildings and taking precautions to not harm anyone.

Meanwhile, during a Congressional hearing on the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the Justice Department proclaimed “we are apolitical in this.” But this is anything but apolitical. Animal rights activists could receive 5-10 years in prison, as terrorists, for not harming anyone or attempting to harm anyone. Meanwhile, take a look at what some others are facing for much more serious crimes:

• Burning at a cross at the home of an African-American man, close to his home, while his family is inside: 3.5 years.
• Threatening president-elect Obama with statements including, “I’m going to assassinate the new president of the United States of America. PS you have 48 hours to stop it from happening”: four years probation.
• Setting fire to a hotel with people inside: 1 year.
• Police officer rapes a girl in juvenile custody: 8 months.
• Assaulting black men on election night because Obama was elected president: about 5 years.
• Enron exec guilty of $7 million in wire fraud and securities fraud: 16 months.
• Possessing child pornography: 4 years.
• Tying up a black student and taunting him with racial epithets as part of a high school graduation party: six months.
• Mailing anthrax threats to the IRS: one year.
• “Using the Internet to threaten to destroy buildings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by fire or explosives”: one year.
• Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte Stallworth kills a construction worker while driving drunk: 30 days.
• Threatening to bomb an Air Force base: one year.
• Drunken man drives over his brother during an argument: 1.5 years.
• Scheming to defraud an insurance company through arson: 2 years.
• Mailing anthrax threats to an assistant U.S. attorney: up to 5 years.
• Manufacturing and selling home-made explosive devices: 5 years probation
• Sending 65 anthrax hoax letters: four years.
• Dumping nearly 13 million gallons of untreated liquid waste: 15 months.
• Threatening to bomb the Oklahoma city federal building: up to 5 years.
• Setting a dog on fire and burning 50 percent of his body: 45 days.

According to the government, high sentences for animal rights activists are intended as a deterrent, they are intended to send a message.

What kind of message do you think this sends?

Note: Funds are needed for the AETA 4 legal defense. Please make a contribution. Go to Paypal.com and send a donation to support@aeta4.org. Or you can make a tax-deductible donation through the National Lawyers Guild Foundation. The mailing address is 132 Nassau Street, Suite 922, NY, NY 10039, please indicate AETA Defense Fund on your check.

Home protest by animal rights activists in Santa Cruz. Photo by AP/WSJ.

The “AETA 4,”—Joseph Buddenburg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo—have been indicted for “conspiracy” to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. As justification of the charge, the indictment lists three specific acts:

1. A protest on October 21, 2007, at an animal researcher’s home. The government says this amounts to “threats, criminal trespass, harassment and intimidation.” In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that on this date “protesters trespassed onto Professor Number One’s front yard and rang his doorbell several times. The group was making a lot of noise and chanting animal rights slogans (“1, 2, 3, 4 open up the cage door; 5, 6, 7, 8, smash the locks and liberate; 9, 10, 11, 12, vivisectors go to hell”)…”
2. A protest on January 27, 2008, at an animal researcher’s home. The government says this amounts to “threats, harassment, and intimidation.” In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that on this date approximately 11 individuals demonstrated at the homes of multiple researchers. “At each residence, the individuals, dressed generally in all black clothing and wearing bandanas over their nose and mouth, marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks…”
3. Use of the Internet. They allegedly “used the Internet to find information on bio-medical researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz.”

Even more telling, though, is what is not listed in the indictment. In the criminal complaint and the FBI press release, the government mentioned the above allegations along with two other incidents—the only two incidents even approaching a “gray area” between protected speech and illegal conduct.

• At one protest attended by the defendants, a researcher “struggled with one individual and was hit with a dark, firm object,” according to the FBI. (February 24, 2008)
• A stack of fliers titled “Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition” was found at a local coffee shop, Café Pergolesi. The fliers said “we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse” and listed home addresses and telephone numbers. The FBI used video surveillance to allegedly link the flier distribution to the defendants. (July 29, 2008)

Now, to be very clear, the details in an indictment aren’t the final word in any criminal case. They never reveal too much of the prosecution’s hand. They do, however, lay the backbone of the government’s case and put the prosecution’s best foot forward.

Omitting the most controversial, potentially-illegal activity, and instead focusing on protests that involved chalking slogans and chanting, sends a very clear message of where this is all heading. This case and others like it are not about underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front, they are not about “violence,” they are not about the real potential for violence.

They are about using the “War on Terrorism” to chip away at basic First Amendment rights and criminalize dissent.

FBI federal complaint on Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act arrests.

The activists were arrested, in the very first use of this sweeping law, for activity like “chalking defamatory slogans,” creating fliers, protesting while wearing masks, and attending a protest where an alleged attempt at forced entry took place. I was hoping that the criminal complaint would reveal something, anything, to justify such serious “terrorism” charges.

Instead, it reveals how scarce anti-terrorism resources are being squandered on surveilling and investigating First Amendment activity.

Here are a few highlights:

• Video surveillance used to track activist leafleting. Fliers were left at Café Pergolesi in Santa Cruz that listed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of animal researchers. It included rhetoric like “animal abusers everywhere beware we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse.” That kind of heated rhetoric has been used in the leaflets, posters, and chants of not just the animal rights movement, but every other social justice movement. It’s not pleasant, but it is protected First Amendment activity. FBI agent Shaffer says video surveillance was used to identify two activists who left the leaflets in the coffee shop.
• Internet records used to track activists researching public information. FBI agent Shaffer says two of the defendants used “a public internet terminal to download and access the personal information for researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz.” The public information appeared on a flier titled “Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition.” The government obtained internet records from the university, tracked them to a Kinko’s, and then used video footage and business records from Kinko’s to identify activists using the internet for this information.
• DNA testing used to match activists with bandanas allegedly worn at a protest. Agent Shaffer says “based on DNA comparisons, laboratory analysis confirmed that KHAJAVI’s DNA was on at least one bandana, and that a combination of POPE’s and STUMPO’s DNA was on another recovered bandana.” What’s striking is that the government says it doesn’t have the money to help states use DNA testing in death penalty cases—and exonerate innocent people on death row—but there is money for DNA testing of activists’ bandanas.

The only mention of actual criminal activity in the entire criminal complaint is when Shaffer describes an incident at a protest at the home of “Professor Number Eight.” The professor’s husband says he “heard loud banging on the glass pane on the door” and saw “the door handle being twisted back and forth.” He opened the door, yelled at activists, and struggled with someone, and then he says he was hit with a “dark, firm object.” He recorded a license plate number from a car at the protest and gave it to the police, and police linked the car to one of the defendants.

At the very worst—assuming we believe everything this researcher and the FBI are saying—that is obviously not First Amendment activity. But it’s critical to note that the FBI is not alleging that any of the defendants attempted a forced entry, or that any of the defendants struck this researcher. Read the complaint for yourself. The FBI argues that these activists were present at this protest, and that their presence makes them terrorists.

Let’s think about this guilt-by-association reasoning from another perspective. I was covering an antiwar protest a few years ago, and I was beaten by police while wearing my Congressional press credentials (a lawsuit was later settled out of court). I was attacked by a few cops, but there were many more at the protest. Let’s apply the same FBI logic to my personal experience: if DNA testing could link riot gear to cops who were at that protest, would the government hold all of them responsible for my attack?

Of course not. However, the Green Scare and the War on Terrorism thrive on double standards. A glaring example of the hypocrisy is on page four of this complaint. FBI agent Shaffer says activists chanted “murderer leave town, terrorist leave town” at a protest. Apparently, if the FBI calls activists “terrorists,” and if corporations call activists “terrorists,” and if politicians call activists “terrorists,” it’s just business as usual. But if animal rights activists turn the rhetoric on its head, and call a researcher a terrorist? It becomes evidence of “terrorism.”

The weapons of terrorists?

On February 19th and 20th, the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI arrested four animal rights activists as “terrorists.” Details of the arrests and the charges are still coming, but based on my conversations with attorneys and local news articles, this is the most sweeping expansion of the War on Terrorism and the “Green Scare” to date.

As background, a fierce campaign is being waged in California against animal research at the University of California system. There has been a wide range of both legal and illegal tactics. Illegal tactics have included the destruction of UC vans. In August, an incendiary device was left at the home of a UC researcher; no animal rights group has claimed responsibility for this crime, but the university, the FBI and others have recklessly attributed it to activists.

These “terrorism” arrests are not related to that bombing, though. And they’re also not related to the destruction of property. These activists–Nathan Pope, Adriana Stumpo, Joseph Buddenberg, and Maryam Khajavi– were arrested for First Amendment activity.

My calls to the FBI for a copy of the indictment have not been returned, and attorneys I’ve contacted have not viewed it either. However, the FBI’s press release notes that the activists are facing four charges, and lists four incidents. They include:

• Protesting outside the home of a University of California Berkeley professor. Some activists, “wearing bandanas to hide their faces, trespassed on his front yard, chanted slogans, and accused him of being a murderer because of his use of animals in research.”
• At another protest, activists “marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks in front of the residences.”
• At one protest, a group of five or six activists allegedly “attempted to forcibly enter the private home of a University of California researcher in Santa Cruz.”
• Fliers titled “Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition” were found at a local coffee shop. They listed the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of several researchers. The fliers said “animal abusers everywhere beware we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse.” The FBI says three of the defendants are tied to the “production and distribution of the fliers.”

Chalking, leafleting and protesting are not terrorism, they are not property crimes, and they are not violent crimes. They are speech. Unlike real terrorists, these defendants are not accused of arming themselves with bombs or machine guns. Their only weapons are words.

The only allegation of possible criminal activity is the FBI’s mention of a forced entry. The details of that incident are unclear, though. For instance, at many lawful home protests in the past, activists have been attacked by the people they are protesting who, understandably, are not happy about a demonstration right outside their front door. In short, the very worst element of the entire set of allegations is nowhere near any reasonable person’s threshold for what constitutes “terrorism.”

When I testified before Congress about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, I was attacked by supporters of the bill, including Democrats, who said the law would only be used to go after groups like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. I argued that the vague and overly broad wording in the law could be used by an ambitious prosecutor or federal agents to target First Amendment activity. Eerily, the hypothetical case I described is identical to the recent arrests. I wrote in my analysis of the AETA in 2006:

Here’s a very likely scenario: A group of activists holds a loud protest outside an executive’s home or office on a daily basis, as part of a national campaign. Activists yell and chant as people enter the building. Some wear masks or bandanas (which are increasingly common at protests, because activists fear being “blacklisted”). There have also been illegal actions like “vandalism” and “property damage” in the name of the same cause (which has been the case in every social movement, ever).

Activists clearly intend to “interfere with” the operations of animal enterprise. Toss in the climate of fear that industry groups have created, plus the raucous nature of the protest and the fact that it’s part of a coordinated campaign, and suddenly this First Amendment activity becomes “terrorism” under the law (through a “course of conduct” involving harassment, intimidation, vandalism… whatever they can get to stick).

This is, verbatim, what the FBI and prosecutors are alleging in this case. These arrests dispel each and every myth by corporations and the politicians who represent them, and make strikingly clear that the true purpose of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was never to target underground activists. It was passed in order to chill and overtly silence First Amendment activity.

The government is chipping away at fringe elements, silencing the speech of so-called radicals as “terrorists.” But this is not the end, it is the beginning. Such an overt targeting of First Amendment activity puts every social movement, every activist, and every American at risk. Targeting free speech as “animal enterprise terrorism” sets a precedent set for targeting the speech of other activists as “defense enterprise terrorism,” “timber enterprise terrorism,” and “financial enterprise terrorism.”

At issue here is not the validity or morality of animal research, nor is it the efficacy of controversial tactics. Differences of opinion on those issues no longer matter. What’s at issue is whether the War on Terrorism should be used to target protesters as terrorists.

The true test of the health of the First Amendment, and basic freedoms in a democracy, is not whether safe, non-controversial, popular beliefs are protected. The test is whether the extreme, the radical, the outlandish, the offensive and the crude are protected.

When it comes to freedom of speech, the battleground–the front line–must be protecting the fringe.

UPDATE: Information on prisoner support.