In January 2009 seven animal rights extremists were sentenced to a total of 50 years’ imprisonment following a 6-year campaign of blackmail against Huntingdon Life Sciences, an animal research laboratory in Cambridgeshire. The case reflects the severity with which the law regards this offence: it is triable only in the Crown Court, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years. It has been described as ‘one of the ugliest and most vicious’ in the criminal calendar because it often amounts to ‘an attempted murder of the soul’ (Lord Lane LCJ in R vHadjou, 1989). The victims in the Huntingdon case were subjected to unrelenting pressure to close down the facility, including hoax bomb threats, untrue allegations of paedophilia, actual and threatened damage, protests outside the homes of the employees and abusive letters and e-mails.
This article relates to AQA A2 Unit 4: Criminal Law (Offences Against Property: Blackmail).
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