SEATTLE – After taking nine years to penetrate what they called a “vast ecoterrorism conspiracy” in Oregon and four other Western states, federal prosecutors announced Friday the indictments of 11 people for participating in a five-year string of arsons and sabotage claimed by the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.
The 17 attacks, which occurred between 1996 and 2001, caused no deaths but resulted in an estimated $23 million in damage to lumber companies, a ski resort, meat plants, federal ranger stations and a high-voltage electricity tower.
After its members allegedly set fire to the office of the Boise Cascade wood products company in Monmouth, Ore., on Christmas Day 1999, the Earth Liberation Front sent out a statemtn saying, “Early Christmas morning elves left coal in Boise Cascade’s stocking.”
In Washington, D.C., the Justice Department called the indictments a breakthrough in what prosecutors said has been a long and difficult investigation of the animal-rights and environmental groups, which organize themselves in small, Maoist-style cells and advocate “direct action” against those who abuse animals or the Earth.
“Today’s indictment proves that we will not tolerate any group that terrorizes the American people, no matter its intentions or objectives,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference.
Joining Gonzales, FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “Investigating and preventing animal rights and environmental extremism is one of the FBI’s highest domestic priorities.”
Dating back to 1987, there are 188 open investigations of crimes claimed by ELF and ALF, according to Carl Truscott, director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said 25 to 30 of those cases are being actively being pursued – about half of them in the Pacific Northwest, California and Utah.
In Oregon, where a federal grand jury handed up the indictments, U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut said it took a long time for federal, state and local authorities to gain investigative traction in the arson cases because the 11 alleged conspirators, who referred to each other as the “family,” had taken an oath to protect each other. A key break occurred, she said, when informants were found.
“Getting inside information was one of the critical components of being able to crack the case,” she said.
Investigators said most of the 11 people indicted have lived in and around the university town of Eugene, Ore.
In Eugene, two defendants, Jonathan Christopher Mark Paul, 39, and Suzanne Nicole “India” Savoie, 28, were both ordered held without bail, pending further hearings.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Eugene accused Paul, a firefighter, of setting firebombs that burned down a horse slaughterhouse in 1997. ALF claimed responsibility for that fire, which caused an estimated $1 million in damage.
Savoie, who works in a group home for the developmentally disabled, is accused of serving as a lookout for a fire in 2001 that destroyed offices of a lumber mill. ELF claimed responsibility for that fire.
The other defendants are Joseph Dibee, Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, Sarah Kendall Harvey, Daniel McGowan, Stanislas Meyerhoff, Josephine Overaker, Rebecca Rubin, Darren Todd Thurston and Kevin Tubbs.
Dibee, Overaker and Rubin have not been arrested. The other six were arrested in December.
This week, ELF apparently claimed another arson, when a mansion under construction on Camano Island was destroyed by fire. ELF has claimed responsibility for burning down a number of big houses being built in Washington state in the past two years, but no arrests have been made.
In California in recent years, ELF has also claimed responsibility for arson in housing developments and attacks on sport utility vehicle sales lots.
“Our law enforcement has a lousy record of catching these people,” said Gary Perlstein, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Portland State University in Oregon. “Unfortunately, I think the message you can take away from these indictments is that you can get away with these kind of crimes for a long time.”
ALF was created in the mid-1970s in Britain as a radical outgrowth of the animal rights movement. The group became active in the United States in the late 1980s. Its Web site says one of its primary goals is “to inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals.”
ELF emerged in Britain in the mid-1990s, and its organization and tactics are modeled after ALF. Members of both organizations often work together, Perlstein said.
“These people have the ability to hide and stay away from law enforcement in a way that traditional criminals are not able to do,” Perlstein said.
An unindicted coconspirator in the case, William Rodgers, 40, who was arrested in December in Arizona on related arson charges, killed himself shortly after his arrest.
Information from the Associated Press is included in this story.
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