THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 19, 1995 TAG: 9512190297
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
A federal magistrate sent property destruction charges to a grand jury Monday in the case of three peace activists who put on fake ID badges, broke into a shipyard and hammered a submarine.
The three, members of the group Plowshares, could get up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for the Aug. 7 protest inside Newport News Shipbuilding.
Damage repair and cleanup from the incident cost more than $20,000, Peter J. Mercier III, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, testified at a preliminary hearing for the defendants.
Among the costs, said Mercier and shipyard investigator Charles R. Greene, was sending divers to examine the hull of the submarine Greeneville for explosives.
``We take every precaution,'' Greene told U.S. Magistrate James E. Bradberry, who tentatively set Jan. 19 to arraign Michele Naar-Obed, 39, of Baltimore, and Erin Sieber, 21, and his father, Rick Sieber, 47, both of Philadelphia.
A federal grand jury is to meet in early January.
Naar-Obed, the Siebers and a fourth activist, Amy Moose, have admitted to cutting through a fence at the giant shipyard and climbing aboard the Greeneville, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine that is under construction.
There, they said, they poured some of their own blood down missile launch tubes and hammered the tubes until shipyard security came to arrest them.
The tubes were left with numerous dents from the blows, Mercier said.
The protest, nearly identical to a Good Friday 1993 incident in which Naar-Obed also participated, was intended to mark the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Moose, 30, of New York, pleaded guilty last month to state property destruction charges and was ordered to pay restitution. At a hearing last week, a Circuit Court judge set aside the state charges against the other defendants to allow the federal prosecution.
Mercier and Greene were the only witnesses to testify at the federal hearing, after which Bradberry said he found probable cause to send the charges to the grand jury.
At one point, Naar-Obed attempted to explain the Plowshares' views on disarmament, but the magistrate cut her off.
``We're not going to go into any of that,'' he said.
Bradberry agreed to allow the defendants to travel outside Virginia during the holidays, releasing them on personal recognizance bonds.
They were ordered to return in early January.
The Navy and the shipyard signed a contract for construction of the Greeneville in December 1988. The submarine, one of the last Los Angeles-class boats being built for the Navy, is to be commissioned in February.
KEYWORDS: GRAND JURY PLOWSHARES by CNB