Ally of France's Bove gets jail for GM crop attack
Date: 11-Feb-02
Country: FRANCE
The jail sentence for Bernard Moser, general secretary of Bove's Confederation Paysanne farmers' group, came a day after another court upheld a jail term for Bove over his ransacking of a McDonald's restaurant in a protest at U.S. trade barriers.
"There is a move to make Confederation Paysanne activists look like criminals," Bove, who has yet to enter jail, told Reuters of the jail sentences for Moser and three other opponents of genetically modified crops by a court in the southern town of Valence.
Moser was also fined 3,000 euros ($2,600) for the attack last August on fields cultivated by the Biogemma company in the Drome region. He said he would appeal.
Bove, who with his pipe and walrus moustache has become a hero of the international anti-globalisation movement, led an assault in 1999 on the site of a half-built fast-food outlet in the southern French town of Millau.
He said it was in response to the U.S. move to impose punitive extra-tariffs on a list of European goods - including Roquefort cheese - in retaliation for the 15-member bloc's ban on imports of North American hormone-treated beef.
France's highest court upheld last week a three-month jail sentence for the attack, but a lower court must still decide how exactly the sentence is applied.
Bove is also fighting a six-month jail sentence for destroying genetically modified rice plants in a 1999 raid. A decision on that is not expected before the end of the year.
Many French see Bove as a defender of the country's proud food and farming traditions. With national elections due in under three months, leaders of France's left-leaning ruling coalition expressed sympathy last week for his cause.
