No Deportation For Ulla Røder

TRIDENT PLOUGHSHARES Press Release: 15th January 2002
Today Danish Trident Ploughshares campaigner Ulla Røder learned that the Home Office will not deport her from the UK. Ulla (47), from Odense in Denmark, but currently living and campaigning in Scotland, was recommended for deportation in October by Sheriff Fitzsimmons in Dumbarton Sheriff Court after being found guilty on six counts for anti-Trident actions.

(See NEWS 5th October 2001)

The Sheriff sent her to prison for three months and said: "I see every likelihood of you continuing to defy the law of this country and I therefore recommend that you be deported at the end of your sentence."

News of the Home Office decision came in a letter to John McFall MP, in response to a letter from his constituent, Jim Taggart, of Cove in Dumbartonshire. The letter, dated 11th January and from Jeff Rooker, Minister of State at the Home Office, says, in reference to Ulla: "I can confirm that no deportation action will be taken against her." No reason is given and there is no evidence today that the Home Office have attempted to communicate the decision directly to Ulla.

Trident Ploughshares campaigners saw the Sheriff's recommendation as completely disproportionate and politically motivated and have welcomed the Home Office decision, especially in the light of concerns that new anti-terrorism legislation might be used against peaceful campaigners like Ulla, who have been upholding international law.

Ulla herself is delighted. She said: "This is a great relief and I can now start working again to disarm Britain's weapons of mass destruction."

Ulla is one of the Trident Three, famously acquitted after disarming a Trident-related research barge in Loch Goil in 1999. In April last year she swam to Trident submarine HMS Vengeance in its "high security" berth in Faslane and spray-painted "USELESS" on its hull. In October/November she served a month in Cornton Vale Prison for anti-Trident actions before going to the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm to receive, on behalf of the Trident Ploughshares campaign, the Right Livelihood Award.