Pine Gap 4 Trial -Take 5
Dear friends
Sorry I didn’t get to send a report last night, I wasn’t well yesterday and also had to think about my opening address, which could come on today.
Yesterday’s proceedings bubbled along at a fast pace, still going through the prosecution”s witnesses. We are still trying to work out why Crown Prosecutor Dembo is taking the time and trouble to call witnesses to prove what we have already admitted to…? I’m sure we’ll find out is reasoning soon enough as he closes his case today.
The highlight of the questioning yesterday was Jim taking the opportunity to tell the court more about the Raytheon Corporation which holds the contract for maintaining Pine Gap Base. He told the court about Raytheon’s other work: weapons manufacturing including the making of cruise missiles.
When the Crown Prosecutor objected to the questioning, remarkably the Judge allowed Jim to continue! It was great to have truth spoken in an open courtroom about a very shady, dodgy, dangerous corporation which makes money out of killing.
So Crown Prosecutor Dembo wraps up his case today, and hopefully our opening addresses will start this afternoon – we are looking forward to that. We are also aware anything can (and has!) happened in this trial so far when we didn’t expect it, so there could be some more surprises!
What we do know is the Commonwealth is VERY concerned about what we are going to say about the functions Pine Gap in our evidence and is running around trying to gag us using various means such as Parliamentary Privilege!
some supporters have done more detailed updates on the blog:
and an ABC news story from yesterday:
bye for now
Donna