Peace activist or terrorist?

Boat protesters face charges

Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange.com
12.05.05

Glen Milner doesnt look like a terrorist. The soft-spoken, 54-year-old electrician is a longtime peace activist who, in 1999, managed to get Army recruiters banned from Shoreline schools in Washington. Since 2000, he and colleagues from the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action have mounted waterborne protests of military ships carrying depleted uranium munitions at an annual marine festival in Seattle.
And in August 2004, one such protest got him in trouble.

Next week, on Dec. 13, Milner will stand trial in a Seattle Coast Guard civil court. He is charged under a new law, passed in the wake of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, that establishes a 500-yard security perimeter around naval vessels. The Coast Guard has no records of any other such prosecutions, and Milner may be the first person in the country charge under the new anti-terror law.

The idea, presumably, is to make it illegal for would-be suicide bombers to approach naval vessels. In practice, Milner says, the law was used by Coast Guard officers to harass a peace activist.

“They knew who we were and that we didn't have anything, but they persecuted us because we were political activists,” he says.

If convicted, Milner faces a $10,000 fine — down from the $32,000 the Coast Guard originally notified Milner it would assess. Milner denies violating the perimeter. On August 5, 2004, Milner and KEXP/cable access producer Mike McCormick were in an 11-foot inflatable boat, one of three tiny Ground Zero boats protesting the arrival of massive Navy ships in Elliott Bay.

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Aren't all peace activists terrorists, and vice versa?

:sarcasm:

there's a law against murder and they don't follow that...but i guess they'll respect that 500 yard thing. right.

He's not a member of the coast guard so how on earth can they claim jurisdiction? Seems a little FUBAR to me!