29 environmental activists had their convictions overturned when it came to light that Mark Kennedy – a British cop who also infiltrated Kárahnjúkar dam protests in Iceland – was amongst those involved.
The Guardian reports that the protesters, who were convicted in 2009 after blocking a coal train, had all of their convictions thrown out yesterday.
The appeal court heard that Kennedy attended a private meeting where the 29 campaigners formulated their protest. He hired a van and drove some of them to the protest. The court was told that police had conceded after the original trial that Kennedy had been “the sole driver” for the protest against climate change, raising the possibility that it would not have gone ahead if he had not been involved.
[Lord chief justice Lord] Thomas ruled that Kennedy’s role should have been disclosed to the activists as it would have enabled their lawyers to argue at the original trial that the spy had been an agent provocateur or that there had been an abuse of the legal process.
Mark Kennedy’s name might be familiar to Grapevine readers – British policeman Mark Kennedy participated in the Kárahnjúkar protests, and told the Guardian that he had taken part in major protest operations, rising up the activist ranks, and had even seduced protesters to extract information from them. Saving Iceland, an environmentalist group who spearheaded the protests against the Kárahnjúkar dam project, denied that Kennedy was particularly active or important in Iceland.
Kennedy is a free man at the time of this writing, but his involvement in various protest activities has led to many arrested protesters having their convictions overturned or dismissed.
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