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Compensation for roughed-up farmer

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 24 May 2007
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Nuclear Movement Police - Repression Justice Europe

by Diet Simon

A German farmer has been awarded 3,000 euros compensation for being roughed up by police during a transport of nuclear waste half a kilometre from his farm.

In November 2004 the farmer was working with his forklift near the railway line on which caskets containing the highly radioactive waste were to run to a dump in Gorleben, northern Germany.

Police yanked him brutally from his tractor and threatened him with a pistol. He was led off in handcuffs and taken to a detainee collection point in Lüneburg.

Police alleged that the farmer intended to block the nuclear transport with his tractor. Farmers with tractors are one of the main means of resisting nuclear transports to Gorleben.

Lüneburg judge Bernd Gütschow ruled the allegation “incomprehensaible”. The assumption by the police that the farmer had intended to stop the passage of the transport lacked all basis, he said.

The spokesman of the Gorleben resistance, Francis Althoff, said: “In the Castor transports to Gorleben, regularly as many police are deployed as have been announced for the G8 summit in Heilgendamm.

“A long chain of court cases won over unlawful police actions shows drastically that the business of the nuclear industry is not compatible with democracy and basic rights.

“Also under these aspects the unsuitable location of Gorleben needs to be shut down immediately before reckless police put even more people in danger.”

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