Is eco-sabotage terrorism?
On April 10, federal prosecutors will try to convince Judge Ann Aiken that it’s appropriate for them to try to tack 20-year “terrorism enhancements” onto the sentences of the 10 Operation Backfire defendants who have pleaded guilty before the federal court in Oregon. Prosecutors have indicated that, if Aiken gives them the green light, they’ll try to pin each of the defendants as a terrorist during their individual sentencing hearings. They’ll likely do the same before the court in western Washington, where two more have pleaded guilty and a third awaits trial. If prosecutors succeed, Lacey Phillabaum’s recommended sentence of three to five years, the shortest proposed jail term for an Operation Backfire defendant, could become 25 years. Her boyfriend Stan Meyerhoff’s sentence of almost 16 years, the longest proposed term, could become 36. James Jarboe, chief of the domestic terrorism section of the FBI, told a House subcommittee in 2002 that “The FBI defines eco-terrorism as the use o
