Some of the hate mail was signed the Animal Liberation Front, others the Animal Rights Militia. The extremists left a doll with a knife in its chest and pins in its head outside the house of a farm labourer and spelled out his name in shotgun cartridges. "We're tooled up and ready, are you?" they wrote in one letter. They wrote threatening to attack her unless she stopped working for the Halls. They threatened a cleaner who worked for them, leaving fake explosive devices outside her home and throwing paint bombs through her windows. The activists conducted painstaking research - helped by a mole at the DVLA - to trace anyone connected with the family and terrorise them. In September 1999, more than 600 guinea pigs were "liberated" in a raid. It began in 1999, when members of the protest group Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs began to turn up at the Halls' farm with placards comparing their operation to a Nazi concentration camp. The four pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail - the first time such a charge has been used successfully against animal rights extremists.Īt yesterday's sentencing hearing, Anthony Glass QC, prosecuting, described a "prolonged and vicious attack" against the Hall family, their relatives, friends and contacts.
#ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT PROTESTS FULL#
You will be caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law." Your cowardly tactics will not be tolerated. Detective Chief Inspector Nick Baker, who led the inquiry, said: "I hope the sentence sends a strong message to those tempted to engage in such extremism. You sought to enforce your views not by lawful protest but by subjecting wholly innocent citizens to a campaign of terror." He said: "You assumed the right to dictate which lawful activities you would permit and which you would not. Sentencing the men, Judge Michael Pert described them as wicked and a danger to society. The body was found only last week in woodland after Smith told the authorities where it was. The relentless campaign culminated in the theft of the body of Gladys Hammond, a close relative of the Hall family who ran the farm, from her grave in October 2004.įor months, activists taunted the Halls, telling them the body would be returned if they closed the farm. There were attacks on homes, cars and businesses. Explosive devices were sent to some, mail threatening to kill and maim to others. Whitburn's girlfriend, Josephine Mayo, was sentenced to four years for a lesser part in the campaign.Īlmost 100 people connected to the farm were targeted. Jon Ablewhite, John Smith and Kerry Whitburn pursued a six-year hate campaign against Darley Oaks farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire. The militants, including a vicar's son and a psychiatric nurse, led what they called a "holocaust" against a farm which bred guinea pigs for medical research. Three animal rights extremists involved in the theft of the body of an elderly woman from her grave were yesterday jailed for 12 years each in what is seen by police and prosecutors as a groundbreaking case.
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