Blood-Pouring Anti-Nuke Clowns Sent to Prison
Weapons of Mass Destruction Protected
By Bill Quigley
11/17/06
Three men protesting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in North Dakota were sentenced to federal prison terms of over three years and ordered to pay $17,000 in restitution by a federal judge in Bismarck. The three dressed as clowns and went to the Echo-9 launch site of the intercontinental Minuteman III nuclear missile in rural North Dakota in June 2006. They broke the lock off the fence and put up peace banners and posters. One said: "Swords into plowshares - Spears into pruning hooks." They poured some of their own blood on the site, hammered on the nuclear launching facility and waited to be arrested.
The Minuteman III missile has over 20 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and can reach a target within 6000 miles in 35 minutes. The men called their action the “Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares.”
Dressed in faded black striped prison uniforms and blue cloth slippers, they appeared before the federal court for sentencing. Fr. Carl Kabat, 73, a catholic priest from St. Louis with a life-long history of resistance to nuclear weapons was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Greg Boetje-Obed, 52, a former Navy officer living with his family in the Catholic Worker community in Duluth Minnesota was given a 12 month and one day prison sentence. Michael Walli, 58, also with the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker in Duluth received 8 months. All were ordered to pay $17,000 restitution.
During their trial, the men openly admitted try to disarm the nuclear weapon. They pointed out to the jury that each one of these missiles was a devastating weapon of mass destruction, a killing machine precisely designed to murder hundreds of thousands. Testimony by experts about the illegality of these weapons of mass destruction under international law and their effects were excluded by the court and never heard by the jury.
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