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| Animal rights campaigners jailed | Animal rights campaigners jailed |
| (20 minutes later) | |
| Seven animal rights activists who blackmailed companies linked to an animal testing laboratory have been jailed for between four and 11 years. | Seven animal rights activists who blackmailed companies linked to an animal testing laboratory have been jailed for between four and 11 years. |
| They used paedophile smears, criminal damage and bomb hoaxes to intimidate companies associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire. | They used paedophile smears, criminal damage and bomb hoaxes to intimidate companies associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire. |
| Heather Nicholson, Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham and Gavin Medd-Hall were found guilty of conspiracy to blackmail. | Heather Nicholson, Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham and Gavin Medd-Hall were found guilty of conspiracy to blackmail. |
| Gregg and Natasha Avery, of Hampshire, and Daniel Amos, admitted the charge. | Gregg and Natasha Avery, of Hampshire, and Daniel Amos, admitted the charge. |
| Winchester Crown Court heard that during a six-year campaign members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) falsely claimed managers of the companies were paedophiles. | |
| They also sent hoax bombs parcels and made threatening telephone calls to firms telling them to cut links with HLS. | |
| One of the features of intimidation included sending used sanitary items in the post to the firms and daubing roads outside managers' homes with slogans such as "puppy killer". | |
| Members of SHAC covered their faces during a raidIn pictures | |
| Nicholson, 41, of Eversley, Hampshire, was jailed for 11 years, Gregg, 41, and Natasha, 39, Avery were sentenced to nine years each and Medd-Hall, 45, of Croydon, south London, was given an eight-year prison sentence. | |
| Wadham, 21, of Bromley, south London, was jailed for five years while Selby, 20, of Chiswick, London, and Amos, 22, of no fixed address, were both sentenced to four years in prison. | |
| Sentencing the activists, Mr Justice Butterfield called the campaign "urban terrorism" and a "relentless, sustained and merciless persecution" which had made the victims lives "a living hell". | |
| The court heard the defendants were part of SHAC, which was based near Hook, Hampshire, and between 2001 and 2007 they targeted companies in the UK and Europe that either supplied or had secondary links with HLS. | |
| It was told Nicholson, from Eversley in Hampshire, was a founder member of SHAC, who managed the "menacing" campaigns against the firms. | |
| Another defendant, Trevor Holmes, 51, from Newcastle, had earlier been cleared. |