Derry arms case: now the story can be told
EAMONN MCCANN, a well-known NUJ freelance and activist in Derry, will face an open trial for his involvement in a raid on an arms factory last year.
An extraordinary ban on reporting any aspect of the case was lifted by the Crown Court in Belfast in February. The trial begins on May 19.
Eamonn McCann was one of nine people are accused of breaking into the Derry premises of Raytheon Inc, an American firm that supplies hi-tech equipment to the British, Israeli, American and other military, in protest at the use of the company’s equipment in the bombing of Lebanon by Israeli warplanes in August 2006.
The protestors were incensed that it was a Raytheon-guided “bunker buster” bomb that had destroyed a block of homes in the Lebanese town of Qena, killing 63 people, 42 of them children.
Computer equipment was thrown from windows and smashed but no-one was injured in the early morning raid.
The “Raytheon 9” are accused of aggravated burglary, affray, theft, possession of ID tags and criminal damage. All are on bail.
The case has been dragging on for 18 months.
Derry Crown Court last year that banned all reporting of the case, all protests or anything else concerning the Raytheon company, and of the very fact that the order itself had been imposed.
The order was challenged in the Belfast court by an anarchist group from Derry. The Belfast judge ordered it to be lifted at once, before considering the challenge.
The union could not publicise the gag and did not join appeals for the gagging order to be lifted, because the NUJ Irish Executive Council had voted to support Eamonn McCann’s case. Legal officer Roy Mincoff said it would not be appropriate to make representations from the stance of media freedom or the public’s right to know.
Eamonn McCann told the Journalist why he himself took the action: “We were trying to make a stand. The frustration became too much, particularly after the bombing of Qena. We had to do something after seeing the news on Lebanon every night.”
When the nine saw little security about, “we sort of pushed our way inside.
“We hadn’t really trashed it. All we did was to try to decommission the system. We threw PCs out of the window but we did make sure no-one was standing underneath.”
He added: “If the state persists with its intention to proceed to a trial, it is saying that it’s a crime to occupy a business premises, but not a crime to occupy a country; that it’s a crime to drop computers from a window, but not a crime to drop bombs onto innocent people.”