Protesters get bail but choose jail | Rockhampton News | Local News in Rockhampton
Protesters get bail but choose jail
Jessica Morrison and fellow Peace Convergence activists leant moral support outside the Rockhampton Watchhouse to two of their colleagues who were arrested after blocking an access road to the Shoalwater Bay training area.
TWO anti-war activists took protesting to a new level yesterday when they refused to sign bail papers until a Shoalwater Bay military exercise was over.
Ciaron O'Reilly, 49, and Jim Dowling, 53, were granted bail by a Rockhampton Magistrate but instead of signing for their freedom, they opted for an extended stay in a jail cell.
Earlier yesterday, the pair was arrested for holding up a military motorcade on its way to Talisman Saber - the joint military exercise between Australian and American troops.
Protesters in the court gallery clapped when the men walked into the room.
Magistrate Annette Hennessy told them to stop applauding.
Sean O'Reilly, Ciaron's brother and also member of the pacifist Catholic Worker movement, said he wouldn't be giving his brother any advice to sign for bail.
Sean said his brother and Dowling knew it was inevitable they would be arrested when they held up five semi-trailers carrying military equipment on Raspberry Creek Road near the intersection with the Bruce Highway north of Rockhampton at 7.10am.
He said the protest group had agreed if anyone was arrested they would refuse bail and be housed at the Capricornia Correctional Centre until the war games ended.
Sean said he was “very pleased with the outcome of the action”, holding up the convoy for an hour.
Both men have been charged with contravening a move-on direction from police.
Duty lawyer Zoe Craven, who represented the protesters, told reporters outside court the men did not want her advice.
She had the matter adjourned to August 12.
Sean said it wasn't the first time his brother had been arrested.
He said Ciaron spent a year in US prisons for damaging a B52 Bomber in New York on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991.
Dowling was previously convicted of a 2005 break-in at Pine Gap during the Iraq War.
O'Reilly had been arrested in Ireland in 2003 and charged with causing $2.5 million in damage to another US war plane en route to the invasion of Iraq.
Yesterday morning, the pair said they knelt in the middle of the road holding signs “War is Terror is War” and “Resist the War on Afghanistan”.
In a statement O'Reilly described Talisman Saber as “a $250 million exercise in futility”.
“Talisman Saber is not a game or an exercise, it is a fantasy - a war theatre with no civilians,” he said.
• The military training operation Talisman Saber is spelt correctly in this story, as sourced from the Australian Defence Force website.
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