Peace activist acquitted of criminal damage : Melbourne Indymedia

Peace activist Pretam Kaur was today acquitted in the Melbourne Magistrates Court of criminal damage after she wrote the killing has started in red paint and placed red handprints on two statues outside the US Consulate in Melbourne last year. She also avoided a restitution bill of over $9000 for the alleged clean up costs.

The incident occurred in a spontaneous moment of grief upon Ms Kaur being told of the outbreak of war on Iraq on 20 March 2003. Ms Kaur had been maintaining a vigil with others outside the US Consulate in the hope that the war would not begin. When she was told that it had she took a pot of water based paint that she had been using to make protest signs and applied it to the statues.

Magistrate Hodgens who heard the matter found that damage had been caused by Ms Kaur’s actions but that she had not intended it.

According to Ms Kaur’s lawyer, Peter Noble from the Fitzroy Legal Service, the case turned on a legal point about what constituted the requisite intent. “It wasn’t a question of what an ordinary person would think would cause damage, it was a subjective question of what the defendant actually thought. Ms Kaur honestly believed that no damage would be caused to the statues by her actions.”

Mr Noble continued “The decision is a victory for justice because it demonstrates the proper application of legal principle to the unusual circumstances of this case, and has rightly resulted in an acquittal.”

“Ms Kaur is greatly relieved by the finding of his Honour and is only disappointed that her conduct was ever considered to be of a criminal nature, especially in the context of the war on Iraq and the devastation there” Mr Noble said.

Ms Kaur was represented on a pro bono basis by barristers Chris Maxwell SC and Shivani Pillai and solicitors Peter Noble of the Fitzory Legal Service and Tanja Kovac of Ryan Maloney Anderson Lawyers.