[02 NOV 00] CRIMES, FIRES & ACCIDENTS
Submarine 'Attacker' Faces Retrial

A former Warwick University student and Coventry peace campaigner will have to face a jury again over damage she caused to a nuclear submarine.

Rosie James, who used to live at the peace camp outside the Alvis factory at Walsgrave Triangle, was cleared in September of one charge of criminal damage on the HMS Venegance.

She admitted swimming to the submarine with Rachel Wenham in Barrow in February last year and hitting equipment with a hammer.

The pair argued that they were preventing a breach of international law in their attack on an “illegal” nuclear submarine.

The jury cleared them of spray-painting peace slogans on the side of the vessel, but was unable to reach a verdict on the issue of the hammer attack.

The Crown Prosecution Service has now announced that there will be a retrial in April next year.

Ms Wenham, who will defend herself this time, said she is: “looking forward to sharing the horrendousness of the Trident missile system with another jury.”

They are both members of the Trident Ploughshares campaign, which is being run to highlight feelings against the use of trident nuclear submarines.

To help raise funds for the retrial, campaigners are inviting people to guess the cost of damage the prosecution claims the attack caused. Previous trials have ranged between £3,000 and almost  £1 million.

All bets will go to the AWTT trial fund (cheques payable to AWPC (Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp), c/o 30, Golwg y bryn, Pantyffordd, Neath SA10 9BY.

The winner gets “the satisfaction of knowing they were right.”

SEE [20 SEP 00]: SUBMARINER ATTACKER CLEARED OF ONE CHARGE