Eco-arsonist Paul fights 'terrorism' label

Defense team for Greensprings resident vows to dispute claim during hearing in Eugene; former Applegate resident Savoie also on docket

By Mark Freeman
Mail Tribune
May 09, 2007 6:00 AM

Greensprings resident Jonathan Paul and federal prosecutors are squaring off in court filings over whether Paul's role in burning a Redmond meat-packing plant in 1997 on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front was arson or terrorism.

At the heart of the debate is whether the burning of the Cavel West plant and the overall ALF/Earth Liberation Front conspiracy were meant to be retaliation against, or coercion of, the government or the public.

In new court filings, federal prosecutors claim that the arson was to intimidate the Bureau of Land Management into disbanding its program of rounding up and selling wild horses off BLM lands. And Cavel West was targeted as the largest purchasers of those horses, whose meat was sold for human consumption and pet food, court papers claim.

"Although the government was not a direct victim, it was nonetheless a federal crime of terrorism because of the offenders' motivation," prosecutors claim in the Government's Sentencing Memorandum filed Friday in federal court.

Paul's defense team, however, claims that he joined three others in the $1.2 million arson solely to put the company out of the horse-slaughtering business, not as an attack on the BLM.

This singular act and Paul's rationale does not reach the federal "terrorist" threshold, according to defense attorney Marc Blackman.

"The objective and motivation of this act of destruction was to put a stop, at least at one location, to the inhumane treatment of horses and the commercial trafficking in horse meat by a private corporation," Blackman writes in a 32-page memorandum filed Friday.