An environmental campaigner described this morning (23/1/14) how a police officer held him in a headlock during a struggle at the anti-fracking protests at Balcombe. Zachary Hewitt was giving evidence at his trial at Brighton Magistrates Court. Mr Hewitt, 23, of Bexhill-on-sea, is accused along with another campaigner, […]
A member of a police evidence gathering team at the anti-fracking protests at Balcombe told Brighton Magistrates Court today (22/1/14) how he was hit on the lip by a placard carried by an environmental campaigner. PC Stephen Kimber, of Eastbourne Police Station, was working at the front of […]
The Crown Prosecution Service refused to comment on the acquittal of the first people arrested at the Balcombe anti-fracking protest last summer. Yesterday, a group of 11 environmental campaigners were found not guilty after a three-day trial of obstructing the highway outside Cuadrilla’s oil exploration site, (See below […]
An environmental campaigner arrested on the second day of the Balcombe protests accused the police of unreasonably and disproportionately aggressive and intimidatory action. Richard Millar, 30, from Brighton, told the city’s magistrates court this morning the police used pressure point tactics on him when he was arrested. Pictures […]
The trial got underway this morning (7/1/14) of the first group of campaigners arrested at anti-fracking protests in Balcombe last year. Three women and eight men are charged with obstructing the highway outside Cuadrilla’s oil exploration site on July 26th. They all deny the charge. The case is […]
We asked Sussex Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to comment on the collapse of the first trial of a campaigner arrested during protests against Cuadrilla’s exploration at Balcombe. The case, heard at Brighton Magistrates, ended abruptly on Monday (25/11/13) when District Judge Peter Crabtree questioned whether an offence had […]
The trial of a teenager charged following a protest outside Cuadrilla’s exploration site at Balcombe was unable to go ahead this morning (November 6th 2013) because the wrong sort of magistrates were in court. Only one of the three magistrates on the bench at Brighton was permitted to […]
From Balcombe Parish Council Website
Dates for 12 more trials were set today for campaigners arrested in the summer’s anti-fracking protests outside the Cuadrilla oil exploration site at Balcombe. The MP Caroline Lucas and four other protestors will stand trial at Brighton Magistrates on March 24th next year, charged with obstructing the highway […]
Six anti-fracking protestors who locked themselves to a fire engine outside Cuadrilla’s oil exploration site at Balcombe became the first people to be convicted following this summer’s protests. But a district judge at Crawley Magistrates Court today accepted they were acting according to their beliefs and conditionally discharged […]
DRILL OR DROP? 