Today the FBI celebrated May Day its own way with the arrests of five individuals who the bureau’s spokesman described as “self-described anarchists”. According to the feds, three of the five men arrested were directly involved in a plot to detonate a four-lane highway bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. They planted what they thought were explosives, went to a location outside of the blast radius, and tried to activate the bombs. An arrest warrant had already been signed before the men even made their way to the site. They had been duped in a typical sting operation in which they are given inert material under the guise that they are explosives to be used for a specific operation, and they are busted when they go about completing the task. While the facts have not yet fully emerged from the events of today, we are to rest assured that the year-long plotting and faux-terrorism incident was under complete investigatory quality control from the brightest minds in law enforcement. Whether the co-conspirator and source of the (non)explosives was an undercover federal agent or a confidential informant, it sounds as if the would-be terrorists were more specifically aiding the plot of another. (more…)
Radio Free Keene News is a five minute newscast which is available as a podcast and also will air at the top of some hours on LRN.FM.
You can download the edition for this week here. Topics covered include the 420 on 4/20 at the state house and NH drug task force officer Jason Short seeing the irony in his use of nicotine.
You can add Radio Free Keene News to your podcast client via this RSS feed.
The Concord Monitor’s Felice Belman writes on her blog from the newspaper’s website that the Concord police have stopped including narratives of the events surrounding an arrest in releases to the press. Recently, they began only including the name and charges against an individual who has been seized by their organization. This is to have stemmed from complaints filed by an attorney on behalf of city councilor Fred Keach, who was arrested for attempting to drive while intoxicated in October 2010. Keach was unhappy with the amount of detail provided by the police in the account of the arrest as published in the Monitor.
The article also overviews that a statutory change pending in the NH legislature will specify the amount of information to be released by police following an arrest. It is hard to imagine anyone would support a more secretive local police force that didn’t work for the police or prosecutor’s office. In case you may be curious as to what a typical arrest narrative given to a defendant would look like, here’s a scan of the report I received with my discovery packet from the Chalking 8 trial.
Regarding the Court not returning Jason’s camera, please check out NH House Bill 0225. This bill (that just passed a House vote and moved to the NH Senate) would force the Court to give Jason his camera back.
It is his personal property and he isn’t facing any charges right now. Isn’t that only fair?
Please contact your NH Senator and ask them to support this bill!
I would again like to repeat my sincere appreciation for the professionalism of Assistant Cheshire County Attorney John Webb, Associate NH Attorney General Richard Head, and Superior Court Judges Kathleen McGuire and James Barry. I also extend my thanks to all of you who followed the case from start to finish. A special thank you to those of you who caught my spelling/grammatical/legal errors and took the time to contact me to let me know. 🙂
Chen Guangchen (left) after his escape, with Hu Jia
Detained human rights activist Chen Guangcheng has escaped the custody of local government officials who had been keeping him under house arrest since 2010. Chen is known as a lawyer who worked to expose forced abortions and sterilizations among 7,000 women in rural China.
While drawing attention to the human rights abuses in 2006, he was brought up on bogus charges of “deliberately destroying property” and “disrupting traffic”. After serving a four year prison sentence, he was confined to his home, where guards kept constant watch to prevent him from communicating with the outside world. Actor Christian Bale attempted to visit the activist in December of last year with a CNN film crew in tow, and was forcibly blocked from the property.
He reportedly escaped on April 22, and made his way to Beijing, where he released a 15 minute video announcing his safe escape and making requests of Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao. His video statement focuses on urging Wen to investigate the unlawful nature of his detention and the intimidation and physical force used against his supporters, as well as calling for an investigation into corruption at all levels. (more…)
Michele Seven refused to take the plea on tickets for registering her car and a trailer. She took them to trial, as everyone should, to clog and hopefully eventually change the system. Here is the raw footage:
Today the FBI celebrated May Day its own way with the arrests of five individuals who the bureau’s spokesman described as “self-described anarchists”. According to the feds, three of the five men arrested were directly involved in a plot to detonate a four-lane highway bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. They planted what they thought were explosives, went to a location outside of the blast radius, and tried to activate the bombs. An arrest warrant had already been signed before the men even made their way to the site. They had been duped in a typical sting operation in which they are given inert material under the guise that they are explosives to be used for a specific operation, and they are busted when they go about completing the task. While the facts have not yet fully emerged from the events of today, we are to rest assured that the year-long plotting and faux-terrorism incident was under complete investigatory quality control from the brightest minds in law enforcement. Whether the co-conspirator and source of the (non)explosives was an undercover federal agent or a confidential informant, it sounds as if the would-be terrorists were more specifically aiding the plot of another. (more…)
Radio Free Keene News is a five minute newscast which is available as 
