Bombings in Quebec, a grand jury in Pennsylvania, convictions in U.K., Utah

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Le Journal de Quebec, of Quebec
City, received an anonymous call on
November 26 from a man claiming to represent
the previously unknown Quebec City cell
of the Animal Liberation Front, who said he
was calling on behalf of the also previously
unknown Montreal ALF to claim responsibility
for two bombs that earlier in the day damaged
both the Laval head office of BioChem
Pharma Inc. and a third bomb that damaged a
BioChem diagnostic lab in Montreal. Quebec
activists told ANIMAL PEOPLE it was a
“bad rap” against the cause, while animal
rights groups that often receive ALF communiques
said they had not received any about
the Quebec cases. Most denounced the bombings,
which came in mid-morning when both
buildings were fully occupied. BioChem,
spun off from the Institute Armand Frappier
at Laval University, uses mice and rats in
pharmaceutical product testing. The Institute
Armand Frappier primate research compound
is next door to the BioChem offices. BioChem
got warnings that the bombs had been
placed at 9:52 a.m., just in time to evacuate
200 people in Laval and 55 in Montreal.

Barry Horne, 45, of England,
drew 18 years in prison from Bristol Crown
Court Kudge Simon Darwall-Smith o n
December 6, after conviction in November on
four counts of arson, five of attempted arson,
and one of possessing articles––18 alleged
firebombs––with intent to do property damage.
Horne earlier admitted four related
charges. His purported targets, which among
them suffered more than $5 million in damage,
included drug stores, research charities,
and a fishing tackle shop. Horne had animal
rights-related prior convictions dating to 1988.
Brett Wyker, 20, a member of
Vegan Resistance for Liberation, on
December 29 told Todd Bishop of the
Philadelphia Inquirer that he believed he was
acting in the public interest when he distributed
a press release just before Thanksgiving,
warning that an ALF-like organization calling
itself The Justice Department planned to
contaminate turkeys in local stores. Similar
threats attributed to The Justice Department
have circulated in British Columbia during the
past several years. Wyker said he would
refuse to testify before a federal grand jury
investigating illegal activity in the name of
animal rights, which has ordered him to
appear on January 8.
Pleading guilty to theft and burglary
in September 1997 for his role in a July
1996 raid on the Ryan Holt mink ranch in
South Jordan, Utah, Clinton Colby
E l l e r m a n, 21, on December 16 was sentenced
to serve two years in jail and serve
three years on probation. A fine of $10,000
was suspended. The raid reportedly did up to
$260,000 damage. Utah 3rd District Judge
Rolbert Hilder offered to reduce Ellerman’s
sentence in exchange for testimony against
alleged confederates, but Ellerman’s attorney,
Loni DeLand, said Ellerman had “disassociated
himself from” animal rights groups.
“There are some violent people, and he is
afraid of retaliation,” DeLand told the court.
On December 15, 1997 Utah 3rd
District Judge Tyrone Medley sentenced
Jacob Lyman Kenison, 19, to serve a year
in jail and pay $30,000 restitution for participating
in a June 1995 arson at a Tandy Leather
store in Murray, Utah. Kenison was already
under a 16-month sentence for purchasing an
assault rifle under false pretenses for Douglas
Joshua Ellerman, 19, Clinton Ellerman’s
brother, who is under federal indictment for
allegedly placing pipe bombs that did
$800,000 in damage to the Utah Fur
Breeders Agricultural Cooperative o n
March 11, 1997. Kenison pleaded guilty to
both charges. U.S. Chief District Judge David
Sam said he would recommend Kenison for a
boot camp program, 36 months of supervised
probation, and 100 hours of community service,
in lieu of serving his time in lock-up.
Douglas Ellerman, facing a possible life sentence,
on December 24 asked U.S. District
Judge J. Thomas Greene to dismiss the 16-
count federal indictment against him, on
grounds his alleged action didn’t sufficiently
involve interstate commerce to be under federal
jurisdiction.
The string of arrests and convictions
have not ended ALF attacks on the fur
trade. At least 17,100 mink and a small number
of foxes were released in October 1997
raids on fur farms in Oregon, Idaho, Illinois,
Iowa, and South Dakota, each claimed later
by persons claiming to represent the ALF. In
Wisconsin the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s
Department seized a car believed to have been
used in several raids, but made no arrests.
The Liberation Collective, of
Portland, Oregon, on December 5 said it had
received a communique from the A n i m a l
Liberation Front and Earth Liberation
Front claiming credit for a November 29
arson that briefly released several dozen horses
from a Bureau of Land Management
holding facility near Burns, Oregon. None of
the 500 horses and 40 burros at the facility
were injured, the BLM said. The ALF reportedly
also claimed to have burned a horse
slaughtering plant in Redmond, Oregon, in
July 1997, and to have released several thousand
mink from a fur farm in Mount Angel,
Oregon. Both actions backfired. The owners
of the slaughtering plant are still killing horses
at about the same pace, at another plant, but
are trucking the horses farther and longer first.
The mink release resulted in hundreds of mink
killing each other, dying of exposure, and/or
being trampled underfoot, apparently by their
would-be rescuers––as was extensively reported
by both local and national media.
The Idaho legislature is again cons
i d e r i n g an anti-environmental terrorism bill
introduced three sessions in a row by state representative
Dennis Iverson, who picked it up
from former representative Met Johnson.
Opposed by civil libertarians, the bill makes a
third-degree felony of “any crime against
property or persons with the specific intent to
halt, impede, obstruct, or interfere with the
lawful management, cultivation, or harvesting
of trees or timber, or the management or
operation of agricultural or mining industries.”