https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16157571/Animal-activists-stole-Kings-lambs-Sandringham-guilty-theft.html
Three animal rights activists who took lambs from the King’s estate in Sandringham and claimed Charles would have approved were convicted of theft today.
Rose Patterson, 37, along with Rosa Sharkey and Sarah Foy, both 26, spirited away three lambs during an early morning visit to Appleton Farm in Norfolk.
Footage of the women, who wore pink t-shirts bearing the name of pressure group Animal Rising, was released online afterwards.
They were also shown brazenly standing outside Windsor Castle with signs stating they had taken the sheep before handing themselves in to police.
Rose Patterson, 37, along with Rosa Sharkey and Sarah Foy, both 26, took three lambs during an early morning visit to Appleton Farm in Norfolk
The case follows other trials where activists have been cleared of offences, leading MPs to warn such verdicts provide a ‘green light’ for people to commit crime.
But a jury took just three hours and 48 minutes to find the defendants guilty of the charge. None showed any emotion as the verdicts were read out.
During sentencing shortly afterwards, the court heard all three women already had a range of convictions for offences including public disorder, aggravated trespass and possessing an article with intent to damage property - connected to other protests.
Sharkey's previous convictions included wilful obstruction of a highway in relation to the Grand National at Aintree in April 2023, for which she was fined £250 and a further £100 for breaching a conditional discharge.
Judge Anthony Bate said: 'The defendants are not strangers to the criminal justice system. They are all, to varying degrees, seasoned campaigners.'
Conservative MP Sir John Hayes, the founder of the Common Sense Group of parliamentarians, condemned the defendants’ actions, telling the Daily Mail: ‘Anyone who keeps animals needs the protection of the law.
‘The distorted understanding of the relationship between humans and animals is evident in the fact that they carelessly took these babies from their mothers.’
He also branded the claim that Charles would have supported the lambs’ ‘rescue’ as ‘impertinent’, adding: ‘It’s hard to think the King would want anyone to steal animals.’
Immediately after the theft on May 24, 2023, livestock experts and farmers condemned the stunt.
A National Sheep Association spokesman said the distressed ewes would have been ‘scouring the field for their lambs, bleating endlessly with no hope of finding them’.
The activists said they target the King because he said he was 'an environmentalist and an animal lover'
Gareth Wyn Jones, a sheep farmer for over five decades, added: ‘These people are absolutely bonkers.
‘It’s distressing for these animals to be handled wrongly by amateur strangers.’
The lambs have never been recovered as they were taken to an undisclosed sanctuary where, Norwich Crown Court was told, they had begun ‘socialising with other animals and had made friends with goats’.
During the trial, jurors were told that the King was the official owner of the lambs, which were worth £400-500, but they were in the care of head stockman Gordon Robinson.
Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales, admires sheep being judged at The Great Yorkshire Show in July 2021
The defendant was previously arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance after being flagged in the group’s plot to sabotage the Grand National.
The defendants stood outside Windsor Castle with signs admitting what they had done before handing themselves in to police
Mr Robinson said in a statement read to the court: 'We unapologetically rear forest-fed lambs to sell for consumption.'
And Mr Clark told the jury in his closing speech: ‘The views of the defendants are all controversial views.’
It might be that farming practices should change, he added, but there are ‘plenty of ways to change the law [and] plenty of ways to campaign lawfully’.
What the defendants didn’t have, he concluded, was permission to ‘take property that belongs to other people’.
So-called Open Rescue, where activists 'rescue' animals in captivity, was first used by protesters in Victoria, Australia.
Earlier this year, four defendants took 18 beagle puppies in an ‘open rescue’ at an animal testing site in Cambridgeshire in December 2022.
Other activists include three Extinction Rebellion members who were accused of obstructing the railway after climbing onto a Docklands Light Railway train in East London in 2022.
The Sandringham Estate consists of 2,400 hectares of farmland, with an additional 4,000 hectares rented by tenant farmers. There are around 3,000 royal sheep at present.
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16157571/Animal-activists-stole-Kings-lambs-Sandringham-guilty-theft.html
No comments:
Post a Comment