Eight RNC Protesters Accused of 'Furthering Terrorism' Thanks To Statute

[babylonsister]

I know there's irony in here somewhere...

Eight RNC Protesters Accused of 'Furthering Terrorism' Thanks To Statute

by Matt Snyders


MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL - Eryn Trimmer sits in a Loring Park coffee shop and peers out the window to the street below. Dressed in a casual charcoal-colored sweater, with wispy blond hair, the gangly 23-year-old handyman resembles your typical coffeehouse regular. You'd hardly suspect he's an accused terrorist.

The Saturday before the Republican National Convention, Trimmer was sleeping upstairs in his two-story home in Minneapolis's Powderhorn neighborhood when he was awakened by a clatter. Within seconds, armed officers burst through his bedroom, guns drawn, and arrested Trimmer, his live-in girlfriend Monica Bicking, and their roommate Garrett Fitzgerald.

Five more RNC protesters would be rounded up during that weekend in advance of the RNC. Dubbed the "RNC 8," the defendants-seven of whom were members of anarchist group the RNC Welcoming Committee-stand accused of "conspiring to riot," a second-degree felony. According to a police affidavit, the eight acted as ringleaders in a plot to "kidnap delegates" and "sabotage the Xcel Center."

Authorities leveled the charges based on evidence provided by paid informants and undercover agents who infiltrated the RNC Welcoming Committee in the months leading up to the convention ("Moles Wanted," 5/21/08). "We assumed the group was under surveillance and that that could include informants," Trimmer says. "It was an open group and we weren't organizing anything illegal, so we didn't want to kick anybody out."

But the RNC 8 face more than the standard felony charges. For the first time, authorities are wielding an obscure state anti-terrorism statute passed in the nervous aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Second-degree "conspiracy to commit riot" ordinarily carries a maximum two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, but because the alleged crime was intended to "further terrorism," the sentence can be doubled to a maximum of five years.

"The statute's definition of 'terrorism' appears to be modeled after a statute in the Patriot Act," says attorney Bruce Nestor, who is defending one of the accused conspirators. "But whereas the Patriot Act statute requires an act of violence against people, the language here extends the definition to include 'violence to property.'"

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/12-0

[Blaze Diem]

1. Every single campaign speech of Sarah Palin's fit's this statute..

as I read it.
Do these people need a legal defense donation?

I want Palin/McCain both arrested, under this statute of the Patriot Act.

[Downtown Hound]

2. What bullshit...

The small amount of rioting that did occur happened when these kids were all in jail, and odds are it was probably undercover police that started all of it. This is a gross repression tactic and if they succeed with it then the effect on dissent will be chilling.