Invasion of the ELFs
The radical Earth Liberation Front opens up a Canadian front with a summer of destruction
Terry O'Neill - September 25, 2006
Last January, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that a massive police initiative code-named Operation Backfire had resulted in the indictment of 11 members of a terror cell. The Family, a radical, violent environmental group, was aligned with the outlaw Earth Liberation Front and had been linked to 16 arson and vandalism attacks in the western U.S. between 1996 and 2001. Six members of the gang, including Canadian Darren Thurston, who was twice convicted of similar crimes in Edmonton in the early 1990s, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and arson charges in July. The rest, as well as two others, are now either on the lam or have been arrested and now face trial in October.
The indictment marked an important victory for U.S. authorities in their fight against ELF, which the FBI has called the number one domestic terror threat in the country. In conjunction with its allies in the related Animal Liberation Front (which has called for the murder of vivisectionists), ELF has been responsible for attacks causing more than US$110 million in damage over the past two decades, firebombing everything from genetic-engineering labs to SUV dealerships.
But even as prison doors slammed shut on some of the U.S.'s most dangerous eco-militants, ELF radicals were running riot in southern Ontario, burning down new housing developments and vandalizing construction equipment, all in the name of protecting Mother Earth (see chart). Since June of 2005, attacks in Guelph, Brantford, London and Toronto have caused more than $3 million in damage, most of it this past summer. Luckily, no one has yet been injured in any attacks, and the incidents have gone unreported by the national media. But that doesn't mean they're not exacting a high toll.
"The unfortunate truth is that it costs construction companies and excavation companies a whole lot of money," says Nathan Lancaster, a project manager with Lanca Contracting Ltd. of Brantford, who suffered a construction site attack in mid-July. Among other things, the vandals ruin heavy equipment by pouring sand into the fuel tanks. "There are so many other serious problems out there, you'd think someone would have better things to do with their time."
So far, police have few leads, but it is known that computers linked to the University of Guelph were used three times to send ELF communiqu?s taking credit for certain attacks. On Aug. 1, Guelph police charged University of Guelph environmental activist Matthew Soltys, 23, with mischief, after they caught a man spray-painting the image of a dump truck on a wall in downtown Guelph; he was also in possession of a stencil reading "Eco-Terrorist." Sgt. Ron Lord of the Guelph police department says he hopes the public will help solve the vandalism and arson attacks, the most serious of which destroyed a golf course pro shop last October. "We're at a point now where all the files are active," Lord says. "Fires of this magnitude--I'm sure somebody will talk somewhere, sometime."
Not necessarily. It was only through undercover police work and extensive surveillance that U.S. authorities were able to crack ELF's criminal conspiracy. Lynne Snowden, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, notes that ELF tends to be organized loosely into independent cells; some lone wolves may even act alone, claiming ELF membership but really just acting in their name. "There's really nothing to connect them to the movement or anything like that," she says.
Whether acting alone or in groups, the eco-zealots usually are young and impressionable and believe that civilization is destroying the world, says author Ron Arnold of Bellevue, Wash. Arnold, executive vice-president of the libertarian research group Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, is one of the continent's experts on radical environmentalism and says typical ELF recruits are aged 17 to 22, and begin lawbreaking at least as much as an expression of their generalized anger at authority as in response to their environmental beliefs. "It's a way to get attention, a way to get even, and revenge is a very powerful motive," Arnold says.
Motive aside, Ontario police seem to have a growing problem on their hands. Brantford's Sgt. Lord says his office is sharing information with police in other cities hit by the eco-vandals, but the communities have yet to establish a joint task force to tackle the problem. That's not great news for contractors and insurers, who have little reason to expect these attacks are going to stop soon.
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