Nicholls, Bob

Bob Nicholls

The Decommissioners' Tale Part One: The action

1 December 2010Feature Bob Nicholls

Bob Nicholls, one of the acquitted EDO Decommissioners, gave a workshop about the case at Peace News Summer Camp in July. Here is the first part of his story.

We were a group of five people who went from Bristol to Brighton, and it did become part of our case: Why did we choose this factory in Brighton? We had to prove our “genuinely-held belief” that this factory was involved in the Israeli attack on Gaza.

One part of the evidence shown to the jury was the On The Verge video about the campaign against the EDO MBM arms factory, made by Smash EDO. The action happened at the end of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack on Gaza, though…

Putting EDO on trial

3 October 2010Feature Bob Nicholls

An EDO Decommissioner sets out the legal strategy that won acquittals for the disarmers. Part Two of our EDO Decommissioners story.

On 30 June and 2 July, the seven remaining defendants in the EDO Decommissioners’ case were found not guilty of conspiracy to cause criminal damage despite their admission that they had damaged £180,000 worth of property on 16 January 2009 in a plant producing weapons for Israel. On 30 June, a unanimous jury acquitted five of the activists, and on 2 July the judge cleared the remaining two defendants of wrongdoing. The court found that the activists broke in with “lawful excuse,” as the…