Sydney activist facing terror charges
BY KIERAN ADAIR
Natasha Verco, a former-Sydney activist is due back in court next Tuesday facing charges of terrorism – and 12 and a half years imprisonment – for her role in organising the protests that took place outside the Copenhagen Climate Summit last year.
Verco, a former Sydney resident and operator of the Newtown Bike Club, was arrested last year under Denmark’s anti-terrorism legislation, hours before the main demonstration took place, while riding her bike along Copenhagen’s lakeside.
She was charged with four breaches of the country’s anti-terrorism legislation, and released on bail 23 days later.
During a preliminary trial which took place earlier this year, the police revealed that they had spent more than three months intercepting private telephone conversations between Ms Verco and others in the lead up to the summit. They brought forward a series of these recordings as evidence, but were criticised for radically reinterpreting the calls to suit their own purposes. One particularly dubious claim caused the judge to object, and as a result one of the four charges was dropped.
The most serious charge Verco now faces is ‘Gross Public Disorder’, but the grounds for this are in doubt. Police admit she never actually broke any Public Disorder law, but claim this was only because she was arrested before she could.
In other words, ‘Thought-Crime’.
“I wonder what the hell they’re going to argue,” says Ms Verco. “Because I can’t see what evidence they’ve got for these charges”.
Ms Verco is one of 17 activists that were charged with serious breaches of the law in relation to the Climate Summit protests, and the group’s trials are being watched closely by international legal and human rights experts, due to the impact guilty verdicts will have on the future international activism.
“[The case] would be hilarious if it didn’t carry such serious consequences for us personally and for democracy,” said Ms Verco.
“The Danish state is using us as a test case for the new anti-activist laws they have passed. It seems to me that applying terror laws to activists is eroding the base of our democracy.”
