Arsonist gets 13-year sentence in terror acts

Crime - A federal judge says a string of fires set by The Family contained the "elements of terrorism"

Thursday, May 24, 2007

BRYAN DENSON Oregonian

A federal judge in Eugene sentenced an eco-saboteur on Wednesday to 13 years in prison for a serial arson campaign that rocked the West, ruling that three of his fire bombings were acts of terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said that Stanislas G. Meyerhoff, 29, was eligible for a life term. But she sentenced him based in part on recommendations of government prosecutors, who had sought nearly 16 years imprisonment.

Meyerhoff was the first of 10 convicted eco-saboteurs scheduled for sentencing within two weeks.

Prosecutors described Meyerhoff, who pleaded guilty to arson and conspiracy charges last July, as a leading member of a dangerous collective of eco-saboteurs known as The Family. Members caused $40 million in damage to corporate and government facilities that they accused of harming the natural world for profit.

Aiken ruled that three of Meyerhoff's arsons were intended to coerce the conduct of government and therefore constituted acts of terrorism under federal sentencing guidelines.

"It was your intent to scare and frighten other people through a very dangerous and psychological act -- arson," Aiken told Meyerhoff. "Your actions included elements of terrorism to achieve your goal.

"The fact that your actions were completely irrational doesn't mitigate this. Nor does the fact that no one was hurt."

Meyerhoff's sentence was the second harshest term ever delivered to an eco-saboteur in Oregon. In 2001, a Lane County Circuit Court judge sentenced anarchist Jeffrey Luers to 22 years, 8 months in prison for torching three pickups at Romania Chevrolet in Eugene and attempting to set fire to a gasoline tanker across town.

Luers' sentence, the stiffest punishment imposed on an eco-saboteur in the United States, is expected to be reduced. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in February that Luers must be resentenced, although it's unclear what that will mean.

Before Luers' trial, Meyerhoff and his accomplices took their own run at Romania Chevrolet, launching an arson attack intended to defy the authorities preparing to try their comrade.

Attack on SUVs

On the night of March 30, 2001, Meyerhoff and an accomplice waited for a security guard to pass by rows of gleaming Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans before they crawled beneath them, linking the SUVs with sheets soaked in gasoline. Their conflagration struck 35 SUVs, causing damage estimated at $959,000.

Afterward, the saboteurs who took part in the arson, which came to be known as "Romania II," sent a communique to news media. Their message decried what they called the persecution of two "earth warriors" -- Luers, known as "Free," and Craig Marshall, who went by "Critter."

"The fire that burns within Free and Critter burns within all of us," they wrote, "and cannot be extinguished by locking them up."

The blaze came in the middle of Meyerhoff's serial arson campaign, which began with the 1998 fire bombing of a ski resort under construction in Vail, Colo. That fire, which caused $12 million in damage, was then the most destructive act of eco-sabotage in U.S. history.

Meyerhoff's other crimes included torching a meat company in Eugene, a timber company office in Monmouth, a police substation in Eugene, a lumber company office in Glendale and a poplar farm business near Clatskanie.

He also helped to topple a Bonneville Power Administration transmission tower near Bend in the waning hours of 1999. The government has characterized that crime as the only act of sabotage on U.S. soil at a time when the nation braced for possible terrorism on the eve of the millennium.

Meyerhoff and other members of The Family operated as a collective of small cells for the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, underground groups characterized by the FBI as the nation's leading domestic terrorist organizations.

Prosecutors made their case against Meyerhoff and nine others awaiting sentencing by early June after federal agents turned one of their partners in crime, Jacob Ferguson, into an informant. The government has not said how it drew a bead on Ferguson, whose cooperation might spare him from prison.

Federal agents got Ferguson to wear a microphone into conversations with other members of The Family, which led to Meyerhoff's arrest. Soon Meyerhoff was talking to the government, too, resulting in more arrests.

Apology in court

While many eco-saboteurs stick to their extremist views as they face punishment for their crimes, Meyerhoff was not one of them. Before Aiken sentenced him, he read a handwritten statement denouncing the Earth Liberation Front.

"I was ignorant of history and economy and acted from a faulty and narrow vision as an ordinary bigot," Meyerhoff said.

"A million times over I apologize . . . to all of you hardworking business owners, employees, researchers, firemen, investigators, attorneys and all citizens whose property was destroyed, whose holidays were ruined, whose welfare was thwarted and whose sleep was troubled," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Bryan Denson: 503-294-7614; bryandenson@news.oregonian.com