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Lawyers explanation of the Greenock case
IT is time to set the record straight on the legal basis on which my client was acquitted by Sheriff Gimblett.
Mr John Mayer, Advocate, after nearly a month of expert testimony from witnesses of the very highest calibre, successfully argued (i) that on June 8, 1999, the British Trident nuclear submarine fleet carried weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction in a state of readiness for use; (ii) the barge "Maytime" which my client disarmed was part of the essential support structure for Trident; (iii) Trident was being used for purposes which amounted to a threat to use that weapon and that threat was perceived by many other nations; (iv) that such a threat was a crime under the Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions and hence under Scots law; (v) that the three accused, like all citizens, had a legal right, but not an obligation, to prevent that crime; (vi) that the three accused, having for all practical purposes exhausted all other lawful attempts to prevent that war-crime acted in exercise of their legal rights; (vii) that in so acting the three accused thereby did so wilfully but not maliciously.
Mr Mayer cited the dispositif of the World Court opinion but expressly did not rely upon it. He submitted that the right to disarm Trident existed long before the World Court opinion. It follows that since the Second World War successive United Kingdom Governments, but the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher in particular for refusing to ratify Geneva Protocol 1, have pursued what can only be called a Nazi position - ie, if something is "official" it must be legal. That is a discredited notion as the cases of Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet demonstrate.
Sheriff Gimblett was a model of fairness and independence of mind. Truly she did in this trial what those who have governed us over the last half of this century ought to have done. They can be ashamed that it has taken a great advocate and a sheriff in Greenock to enlighten us.
Matthew Berlow, Solicitor for Ulla Roder, 386 Duke Street, Glasgow. October 25.
Printed in The Herald on October 26.
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