by Murray Lumley

CPTer David Milne sat in the witness box of a Provincial Court in Burlington, Ontario and told a story that threaded its way from his time in Baghdad with CPT in 2002 to a charge of trespass with nine others during an action organized by CPT partner, Homes Not Bombs, on November 20, 2006 at L-3 Wescam corporation in Burlington. L-3 Wescam is the manufacturer of optical guidance systems for weapons such as the Predator Drone, which has acted as judge, jury and executioner in the so-called "War on Terror."

David spoke to a Justice of the Peace, a crown prosecutor and a packed courtroom that included ten others charged with the same offence plus their supporters. Under oath, he told how he had visited the Al Amariya bomb shelter in Baghdad where about 400 women, children and elderly had died when two U.S. guided bombs--one penetrating the thick concrete and the next an incendiary one that burned alive any survivors--struck it in the early days of the 1991 Gulf War. When the prosecutor challenged his story as hearsay evidence, David produced his own photos of the shelter, but the prosecutor challenged these, too, on their veracity.

In his defence of having violated a property ownership law, David said, "I respect and try to obey secular law, but I believe that God was calling me to a higher law. I believe that God was calling me to go and speak to the manufacturers of weapons in my country, Canada, that have contributed to what I witnessed, the murder of innocent civilians by war machines."

David also told of interviewing many families of detained men, some of whom had been imprisoned in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. He learned that L-3 Communications Corporation, owner of Wescam and the sixth largest defence company in the U.S., also owned a company that provided 'interrogation services' to places like Abu Ghraib.

On the day of the arrest, November 20, 2006, David and others wore the orange prison suits and hoods, typical of political prisoners held in places like Guantanamo, Cuba, as they walked onto the property of L-3 Wescam to try to speak to those in charge or the workers about the consequences of their production.

Despite objections to 'hearsay testimony', the Justice of the Peace seemed enthralled with David's story and a case law presentation made by Matthew Behrens of Homes Not Bombs. The Justice admitted that he had only just heard of terms like Project Ploughshares, Geneva Conventions and Nuremberg Principles. His normal day involves dealing with traffic infractions, and he kept repeating that fairness demanded that each person charged be allowed all the time they needed.

The trespass hearing will continue for another half day on 23 July 2008.