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.

Someone has beaten me to it with the news, but here's a photo to go with it - Reta outside the court today

just to confuse us all, a tiny piece of sanity amidst the Orwellian nightmare.
You rock, lady.

Congratulations to Reta!

Reta was one of the most active people resisting the oil-motivated, illegal invasion and mass killings in Iraq. I found her to be very inspirational.

I hope that more people follow her example in the future and that we can at least stop Australia being sucked into anymore of the US empire's wars.

congratulations again. There's a lot more work to do however as the occupation sees no signs of ending any time soon. The war didn't end. It's still going but the peace movement seems to have left it behind.
Here's hoping for a resurgence of activism against war and militarism.

More Retas and people prepared to put their bodies on the line!

Great job on the aquittal! It's insane that Reta was even arrested in the first place. Good to see that no action was followed through!

Gibberish, your in the last phase.

Congratulations to all involved - to Reta for her inspirational spirit of resistance and to the lawyers who gave up their time in court to defend justice.
Reta was shown strong suport in her case not just by lawyers but by people who went to court etc. The outcome shows that solidarity can prevent the state from defeating activists.
Long live the peaceful spirit of resistance to bloody imperialism!
Another world is possible!

Look at his post in Hidden, its a completly brilliant piece to offer comparison to intelegence and understanding.

why hide my posts? lashing out at a cruel and uncaring world that wont listen to your genius? if you see me as such a mental inferior then why not let me speak so you can feel like a big tough man{or woman, or shemale, no discrimination here}

Thank you for your witness against this war. With very little dissent here on the ongoing killing in Iraq it is inspiring to here about these actions and even more so to here of such a victory as this one.

Jim Dowling from the Brisbane Catholic Worker went to court for his citizens arrest of MP Peter Dutton a week before the election and will return to court on the 23rd December for the verdict.

A statement by Jim Dowling:

About ten of us picketed Peter Dutton's office for an hour before the court case.

A workman renovating the building next door said when I gave him a leaflet, " Good on you. I can't even think about what is going on in Iraq any more. It makes me ill thinking about it!" Indeed this "war" gets more sickening every day!

I had just recently read a little about the Nazis razing Warsaw to the ground in WW2 after the uprising by Polish resisters to the occupation. Those who didn't flee were taken to Aushwitz.

Many have attempted to compare present day US to Nazi Germany. The events of recent days in Falujah can leave us in no doubt the comparison is a valid one. The US has destroyed a city of 300,000 people because they refused to accept US rule. Those who did not flee were killed in their thousands while most of the city was reduced to rubble by the psychopathic killing machine that the US military has become. All that is missing from the Warsaw comparison is Aushwitz - so far.

That the Australian public can let this act of evil pass as part of the attempt to "liberate" the Iraqi people, shows that Aushwitz or worse may not be far off. We will accept it with hardly a murmur.

In court I presented lots of written evidence pointing out Peter Dutton's crimes in advocating and defending the war, as well as supporting the illegal detention and torture of Australian citizens in Guatanamo Bay.

The prosecutor merely said my Citizen's arrest was invalid, and I was in fact a public nuisance as charged.

At the end of the day the Magistrate reserved his decision, and we have to go back to court on December 23rd to hear the decision.

Well if its acceptable for Pretam Kaur to damage property that does not belong to her when she is upset I guess that means that I can damage her property since I am upset.

Oh, c'mon Kelly. A bit of waterbased paint hasn't hurt anyone and $9000 to clean it up is ridiculous especially when it would wash away with the next rain.
Keep in mind that blood doesn't wash away that easy and who is paying to wash that away in Iraq?