Dear Friends,
On 1st September, Turi Vaccaro was in court in Breda, accused of doing
5,000,000 Euro of damage to 2 nuclear capable F16s at Woensdrecht Airforce
base in the Netherlands. A report of the trial is included below.
The second "wraking" (a procedure where the judge is accused of being
prejudiced), was held on Wednesday this week, but was rejected.
The disturbing decision was also made that this "wraking" procedure can
not be used again by the defence in this case.
The trial will continue at 1:30pm on Tuesday 13th October, in the court
in Breda, Netherlands.
If you can't make it to the trial, please write to Turi:
Turi Vaccaro
HvB de Boschpoort
Nassausingel 26
4811 DG Breda
the Netherlands
Check out:
http://www.motherearth.org/prisoner/turi.php
for more updates and news of the trial.
in peace,
david
-----
He's in Jail for Us, We're on the Streets for Him! - based on the report
by Susan Van Der Hijden
Turi Vaccoro has maintained a hunger strike in custody since August 10th
He appeared in court Sept 1st. charged with several ¤million disarmament
of nuclear capable F16's.
Turi from Italy has lived in the Netherlands for many years, the hammer
with which he did his disarmament work was bought in Assissi.
The courtcase against Turi Vaccaro did not reach a verdict last thursday.
The judge was accused twice by the defence of being prejudiced in favor of
the prosecution. The second accusation will be dealt with in court next
week. Turi, who did not speak, but he let the audiance of about 25 people
know that he was doing well.
Turi had to appear before the policejudge because of the disarming of two
F-16 airplaines at airforcebase Woensdrecht in the Netherlands on 10th
August. His action has made it impossible to use these planes to drop
nuclear weapons (like the ones lying in Volkel in the Netherlands). The
estimated costs for restoring this ability are 5.000.000 euro's.
Turi's lawyers (Eric Hummels, quaker, and Meindert Stelling, former
airforce officer) started the courtcase by stating that the charges of the
prosecution should be found unacceptable because they had not taken the
context of the action in consideration.
As an example he said if witnesses see someone cut another mans throat
that last person could be sued for murder if the context is not
considered. If however the defendent gets the oppertunity to explain that
he was doing a live saving trachiometry (making a hole in a suffocating
persons throat in order to make him breath) the charges would have to be
dropped.
By disarming F-16 airplanes serious crimes against international justice
were prevented. By doing so Turi performed the duty each of us have to
prevent such crimes. Because the prosecution did not consider the fact
that the Dutch government is involved in commiting crimes against
international law through having nuclear weapons in its country and
training Dutch pilots to use them the charges should be found unreasonable
and be dropped.
The prosecution did not want to answer this statement and simply said that
international law did not have a place in this (lower) court. Turi's
lawyers demanded the judge would force the prosecution to give a better
answer than that and when the judge refused he was then called a
"wraking", a Dutch legal term for accusing the judge of being partial.
After this 3 other judges were called together to see if the defence had a
valid point here. They did not think so and after some more delay the case
was restarted.
Now the defence asked the judge to put in writing his reason for not
accepting the complaints of the defence. The judge refused to do so and
said he did not want to talk about the complaint at all any more.
At this point the defence lawyer again called a "wraking". This will again
be tested by three other judges somewhere next week.
Turi was brought back to prison in Breda.
Write him!
Turi Vaccaro
HvB de Boschpoort
Nassausingel 26
4811 DG Breda
the Netherlands
