The Animal Enterprise Protection Act: Using an obscure law to charge nonviolent activists with terrorism
By WILL POTTER
In March, six activists were convicted on “animal enterprise terrorism” charges—that’s right, terrorism—for campaigning to shut down the notorious animal-testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences. In September, they will be sentenced: two defendants face up to a year in federal prison, and others likely face five to 10 years. They weren’t accused of murder, bombings or taking hostages. They’re big crime? Running a website.
They posted news about the international campaign to close HLS—legal actions like protests and illegal actions like stealing animals from labs—and unabashedly supported all of it. The government never accused the SHAC 7 of committing any of those acts, but said that posting communiqués and supporting direct action amounted to a campaign of harassment, intimidation and “terrorism.”
Even in this post 9/11 climate, running a website probably wouldn’t top most people’s list of terrorist plots. So how did corporations use the government to turn protected—albeit controversial—First Amendment activity into “terrorism”?