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by Hugh Schofield
MILLAU, France, July 1 (AFP) - Jose Bove, the left-wing French sheep-farmer and anti-globalization activist emerged defiant Saturday from his high-profile trial on charges of ransacking a McDonald's outlet here last August. Responding to the prosecution's call for him to spend one month of a ten-month sentence in prison, with the remaining nine months suspended, Bove said it was "not a question of accepting conviction for having participated in the creation of an international law." "The only possibility for the tribunal is acquittal ... those charged can be considered as international lawyers trying to apply the law," he told a press conference of some 200 journalists after the court adjourned. Prosecutor Alain Durand also asked for suspended terms of less than three months for Bove's nine co-defendants, all members of the radical Peasant Confederation union. Presiding judge Francois Mallet said Saturday the case would be deliberated until September 13, when the court would announce its decision. Bove said he would appeal any decision against him, repeating his call for an international trade tribunal where human economic, social and cultural rights were given priority over the laws of the free market. Earlier, Durand had caused uproar when in his closing arguments; he linked the attack with the fatal bombing of another branch of the fast-food chain in Brittany. "An emblematic and popular personality, Bove has recognized his essential role as instigator. The others were simply agents acting on the orders of their chief. Their responsibility is limited," Durand said. But there were cries of outrage in the courtroom when he said that the ransacking of the half-built McDonald's in Millau last August could have indirectly been a factor in the bombing of a branch in Quevert two months ago by Breton militants, in which a woman employee was killed. "It is clear that in publicly designating McDonald's as a privileged target, he helped to create in certain unbalanced people an image (of the company) as scapegoat. "Of course you had nothing to do with these facts. But one must ask why a McDonald's similar to the one at Millau was subsequently attacked," Durand said. Thousands of demonstrators, who after a late night free pop concert Friday returned for a second day to protest outside the court, booed and jeered when news of the prosecutor's speech was relayed to them. Durand told the judge that, though Bove had become a media star over the last months, because of his identification with the campaign against agro-industry and junk food, the case was essentially a criminal matter, about vandalism to private property. "The fact that he is a militant is not a cause for exoneration -- it is an aggravating circumstance. The law must be applied. That is my sole concern," he said. Bove does not deny that he led the attack in protest against trade sanctions from the United States, including a levy on Roquefort cheese, which he produces, but he says it was a symbolic act, intended to call attention to the iniquities of the world trading system. In Bove's defense his lawyers called several opponents of globalization as witnesses, who argued that the socio-political context should be taken into account as extenuating circumstances. |
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