THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090457
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Four disarmament activists got thumbs-up signs from supporters Tuesday at initial court appearances on charges of illegally going into a shipyard and hammering on a submarine under construction.
The two men and two women members of the anti-war organization Plowshares asked to represent themselves on trespassing and property destruction charges stemming from a Monday protest at Newport News Shipbuilding.
General District Judge Joan Morris set their trial for Sept. 19.
Outside the courthouse, about a dozen supporters of the four carried signs and distributed leaflets promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons and marking the anniversary of the World War II atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
``With blind insanity, we have amassed enough weaponry to eliminate all life on the planet many times over,'' said one leaflet. ``We refuse to see violence as inevitable, injustice as the order of the day, and death-dealing as the only way of life.''
One by one, the defendants - Michele Naar-Obed, 39, of Baltimore; Amy Moose, 30, of New York; Rick Sieber, 47, of Philadelphia; and his son, Erin Sieber, 21, also of Philadelphia - were brought into the courtroom to hear the charges.
As each was brought in, Pat Sieber, brother and uncle of Rick and Erin Sieber, and other supporters gave the defendants a thumbs-up sign or waved. But unlike past court proceedings involving Plowshares members, there were no demonstrations or outbursts.
The four defendants, who refused to post bond, allegedly cut a hole in the security fence around the giant shipyard before dawn Monday and used fake identification badges to climb onto the submarine Greeneville. They then allegedly poured blood and started hammering on the deck until shipyard security officers stopped them.
Shipyard officials said the unfinished vessel was not seriously damaged.
Naar-Obed was charged along with two other Plowshares members in a nearly identical protest at the shipyard on Good Friday 1993. She was sentenced to eight months in that case.
The Greeneville, due for completion in 1996, is one of the last two Los Angeles-class submarines the shipyard is building for the Navy.
But Pat Sieber said the phasing out of the LA-class doesn't mean that money will be diverted to the needs of the poor, as Plowshares demands.
``It would make me feel a whole lot better if I thought it was the end of them all,'' said Sieber, a Franciscan priest from Philadelphia who, with his arrested brother, has spent a quarter of a century in the peace movement. by CNB