Day 1 at court - by jess

Tuesday 29^th May – by Jess

Well there are quite a mob of us up here in Alice Springs, to support our friends in court on trial for the inspection of Pine Gap. We’ve all come in from the Eastern seaboard, to the very centre of Australia. There seems something symbolic about that, coming from our cities and towns to the middle. From the places where Pine Gap is hidden, to the town where it is central.

The trial was supposed to start yesterday, with some final pre-trial arguments, and variation to bail conditions. However the judge’s flight from Darwin was delayed, so this happened today.

There were a few procedural things, which aren’t so interesting. But there were some applications to change the bail conditions – which were MORE interesting! They effectively sought for the defendants to be placed under house arrest!! Lucky the Judge agreed with us that these were “too extreme” and “unnecessary” – and threw them out. She said she couldn’t see any good reason that the defendants couldn’t be part of legitimate political activity.

Quote of the day “you don’t have to be violent to cause disruption” Hilton Dembo QC (prosecution!)