AP News, September 12th, 2007
A few hours after a $50 million condo project burned down, apparently in an eco-terrorism attack, Earth Liberation Front spokesman Rod Coronado stood in front of a San Diego audience and explained how to build a homemade Molotov cocktail.
Prosecutors say Coronado, a longtime environmental activist renowned for helping sink whaling ships and destroying mink farms and animal research labs, wanted people to follow in his footsteps _ although they do not link him to the condo project fire.
On Tuesday, his trial began in federal court on a single count of distributing information on explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction with the intent that his listeners commit illegal acts of violence.
Under sentencing guidelines set after the Sept. 11 attacks, he could face as many as 20 years in prison. His defense claims he was prosecuted because the government wanted to silence him.
"He has said things that are offensive, but he believed, perhaps naively, that under the First Amendment he had the right to say those things," lead defense counsel Gerald Singleton said in opening statements.
The prosecution argued that Coronado was urging listeners to start fires similar to one that day at an unfinished condo project in San Diego.
The blaze, apparently started by the underground Earth Liberation Front, one of the FBI's top terrorism targets, caused $50 million in damage, making it the costliest eco-terrorism attack in the nation's history. A 12-foot banner left at the scene read: "If you build it, we will burn it. The ELFs are mad."
Coronado's earlier writings and speeches show that he boasted about teaching people to make firebombs and wanting to "hear the sound of breaking glass caused by Molotov cocktails," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Skerlos told jurors.
"The defendant encouraged others to commit arson to advance the cause," Skerlos said.
Outside court, defense attorneys suggested that prosecutors charged Coronado because they hadn't made any arrests in the condo arson.
"He wasn't arrested that day, he wasn't arrested that week, he wasn't arrested that month," said veteran San Francisco civil rights attorney Tony Serra. "This is an insult to the Constitution."
