December 22nd: There have been a number of developments in the cases of the eco-defense defendants who were arrested earlier this month and face lonely holidays in prison cells. Daniel Mc Gowan was denied bail based on a conversation that was recorded without his consent. The co-defendant in the charges that he faces is apparently an informant. A former ALF prisoner has received a subpoena for a grand jury hearing. Bill Rodgers was found dead in an apparent suicide in his cell in Arizona, in spite of strong support from his community.

In a bail hearing for Mc Gowan last week, the court learned that an undercover informant had helped investigators to tape a conversation with him. This "evidence" was used to deny bail to Mc Gowan.

Existence of the informant was disclosed last week by an investigator in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, NY, during a bail hearing for McGowan. Mc Gowan faces indictments that he and Stanislas Meyerhoff firebombed the office of a wood products mill and the office and truck shop of a tree farm in 2001. Corporate media reports that a defense motion filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene says that Mc Gowan's co-defendant, Stanislas Meyerhoff, is one of the informants the federal government has relied on for evidence in the investigation. Public defender Craig Weinerman named Meyerhoff and another man, Jacob Ferguson, as informants in a motion for the release of Chelsea Gerlach, who is being held without bail. More about informants Daniel Mc Gowan was moved this week from New York to California and ultimately to Oregon. On December 15th, Democracy Now featured extensive coverage of this case. Audio

Former Animal Liberation Front prisoner Darren Thurston, who is a Canadian citizen, was arrested this month and placed in an INS detention center in Tacoma. His extradition is based on his conviction for raiding a lab in 1992. He was also subpoenaed to the Eugene grand jury for Feb. 16th, 2006. Darren has been told, as were most other recipients of recent subpoenas, that he is a target of the investigation. Read more

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