MARY KELLY CONVICTED FOR DAMAGING U.S. MILITARY

UNCLAS DUBLIN 001635

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PGOV MARR
SUBJECT: MARY KELLY CONVICTED FOR DAMAGING U.S. MILITARY
AIRCRAFT



1. On October 28, anti-war activist Mary Kelly was convicted
by a jury at Ennis Circuit Court of criminal damage without
lawful excuse of a 737 U.S. navy plane at Shannon Airport on
January 29, 2003. The jury found Kelly guilty of causing
damage of USD 1.5 million after she took an axe to the
aircraft, which had landed at the airport en route from Fort
Worth, Texas, to a military logistics base in Italy. The
conviction comes after a jury had failed to reach a verdict
in the case in June 2003, the first time that Kelly had been
tried for the offense.


2. In contrast to the first trial, Judge Carroll Moran did
not permit Kelly in this six-day hearing to make a political
argument in her defense. Representing herself, Kelly had
argued that she had lawful excuse to damage the aircraft as
she was trying to save life in Iraq. In comments to the
jury, Judge Moran said that the defense of lawful excuse did
not apply in this case, since there was "no connection in
time or space between the act carried out by Kelly and the
person or property she was claiming to protect." Moran also
refused expert witness accounts on Kelly's behalf by former
assistant UN Secretary General Denis Haliday and professor of
international law, Curtis Doebbler. The judge explained that
this was not a case to "consider the legality of the war in
Iraq" and that Kelly's act was "simple vigilantism."


3. The sentencing was adjourned until November 5 to allow
Kelly to consult attorneys to consider a plea for sentence
mitigation. The maximum sentence for the offense is ten
years in prison, though attorneys with whom Post has
discussed the case doubt that the final sentence will be that
severe. Any appeal would involve an application to the Court
of Criminal Appeal, a process that could take between six and
twelve months.
BENTON