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Penalties for Nuclear Weapons Resisters in Germany Getting Heavier

By John LaForge

 

After years of imprisoning only German nationals for nonviolent protests against the threatened use of U.S. hydrogen bombs stationed in Germany, nuclear resisters from outside Germany are now being imprisoned for their noncooperation. These resisters have all served time in Germany for refusing to pay financial penalties imposed mostly for go-in actions at Büchel Air Force Base: Susan Crane from California; Dennis DuVall, formerly of Arizona, and now living in Radeberg, Germany; Susan van der Hijden and Fritz ter Kuile both from Amsterdam, Netherlands; as well as Nukewatch’s John LaForge.

On June 4, Susan Crane, of the Redwood City, California Catholic Worker, began serving 229 days, the longest sentence ever handed down in 30 years of anti-nuclear protests at Büchel.* She is the first female U.S. citizen to serve hard time in the campaign. After joining a long string of “go-in” actions at the base, Crane was fined a total of $2,819 by the regional court in Koblenz. She informed the court of her conscientious refusal to pay, and later explained in an email that she “is unwilling to pay for the court’s cover-up of the illegality of U.S. nuclear weapons.”

Susan Van der Hidjen was sentenced to 115-days for the same or similar actions, and the two began their prison time together June 4. After a month in the high-security prison in Rorhbach, both women were transferred to the so-called “open prison” JVA Koblenz, where inmates with good conduct marks are permitted a few hours of free time outside the gates every week. (Because of this strangely regulated “preparation” for a prisoner’s pending release, Crane was able to attend a large anti-war rally in Berlin October 5th.) Van der Hidjen finished her stint and was released and returned home to Amsterdam Thurs. September 26.

Nuclear Resister Dennis DuVall Threatened with Expulsion from Germany

In the newest and most reactionary move by authorities, Germany intends to expel U.S. citizen and nuclear resister Dennis DuVall on October 31, 2024. DuVall, 82, a resident of Radeberg for six years, a member of Veterans for Peace, and a regular protester at the Büchel NATO base has been incarcerated twice for nonpayment of penalties stemming from various actions at Büchel.

The federal expulsion order describes DuVall as a serious threat to security and public order. He has retained an attorney to help fight the order and has won widespread support in his effort to stay. DuVall argues that he has a legal obligation to resist the planning and preparation for nuclear attacks that take place at the base. In two separate criminal court trials, DuVall explained that these nuclear attack plans are in violation of international treaty law including the 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1946 Nuremberg Charter, Principles, and Judgment.

DuVall is the second U.S. citizen ever to go to prison in Germany for nonviolent resistance at the base. He spent 60 days in Bautzen prison in 2023, and this past July 22 reported to the same prison for a 90-day sentence for spray painting “crime scene” on a roadway. He was released from Bautzen after seven days when his $1,643 penalty was paid anonymously.

In a statement announcing the expulsion threat DuVall warned, “B61-12 nuclear bombs and F-35 warplanes at Büchel will push NATO closer to war.” He invites peace and anti-war/anti-weapons groups and individuals to support his fight to stay in Germany, and to sign an online petition to the interior ministry here: www.change.org/p/keine-ausweisung-des-anti-atombomben-aktivisten-dennis-duvall.**

The government’s deportation rationale has been criticized as politically motivated and absurd, since the 82-year-old USAF veteran and retiree can’t possibly endanger the richest industrial state in Europe. German singer/songwriter Gerd Schinkel has even composed a song for Dennis that asks, “Is a demonstrator more dangerous than the bomb he is demonstrating against?”

* Please write to
Susan Crane here:
JVA Koblenz OVA
Simmerner Str. 14A
56075 Koblenz
GERMANY

** You may also urge Germany to rescind its expulsion order for DuVall by writing:
Robert Domanja
Head of Office
District Office Bautzen Foreigners Office
Bahnhof Str. 9
02625, Bautzen
GERMANY

— Felice and Jack
Cohen-Joppa at The
Nuclear Resister
contributed details
to this report.

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Timing of New U.S. B61 Hydrogen Bomb Transfer Unclear

By John LaForge
According to a November 2021 report by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the so-called ‘life extension program’ for the air-dropped thermonuclear bomb called B61-12, “is refurbishing, reusing, or replacing all of the bomb’s nuclear and non-nuclear components to extend the service life by at least 20 years.”
Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists told Politico that the upgrades to the bomb’s design are for “significantly greater accuracy.” This newfashioned H-bomb is also made so that U.S. and allied fighter jets — including F-15s, F-16s, F-35s, and European Tornado fighter jets — “are all able to carry the weapon, as opposed to the several older versions of the B61 that have been in storage for years.”
“Today, approximately 100 U.S. nuclear weapons are estimated to be stored at six bases in five countries, with one additional base (Lakenheath in England) currently undergoing modernization to potentially store nuclear weapons in the future,” Kristensen reported in November 2023. The United States is preparing to replace all older versions of the B61 now deployed in Europe with the incoming B61-12, Kristensen reported. The timeline for the first delivery has not been made public, so watchdogs are keen to observe the arrival — at any of the six NATO bases — of a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III, “the only transport aircraft authorized to move the nuclear weapons,” Kristensen noted.
Newsweek reported in 2022, “The 12-foot B61-12 bomb carries a 50-kiloton warhead — the equivalent of 50,000 tons of TNT.” The U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killing 140,000 people was a 15-kiloton device, making the new weapon 3.3 times more powerful.
In December 2023, Kristensen reported that Dutch Air Force pilots at Volkel air base had begun training to attack with the new B61-12s. Volkel is part of the so-called NATO “nuclear sharing” program, in which “the United States Air Force equips Dutch F-16s (and aircraft of five other NATO countries), and trains their pilots to employ B61 nuclear bombs in war.”
Kristensen had earlier reported that in Germany, parliamentary “debate raised questions about whether individual soldiers could be held liable for the use of nuclear weapons. The 2008, legal guidelines for German soldiers prohibited their participation in the use of nuclear weapons, posing complications for Germany’s ongoing nuclear sharing mission. [But] revised guidelines, which were updated in 2018, reportedly no longer include this prohibition — presumably in order to allow German soldiers to fully participate in NATO’s nuclear sharing mission.”
Civil resisters tried in Germany for confronting nuclear attack training have defended their actions by pointing to treaty laws that forbid such preparations.

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Two More to Prison for Nonviolent Actions at Germany’s Büchel Airbase

Susan van der Hijden, Susan Crane, and Gerd Büntzly at Rohrbach prison, June 4. Peace Walk Büchel photo.
By The Nuclear Resister

On Tuesday, June 4, the first ever female U.S. peace activist sentenced to prison in Germany in the 25-year-long campaign demanding the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Force base, began her sentence of 229 days, the longest ever imposed in the campaign.

Susan Crane, 80, from Redwood City, California, along with Dutch citizen Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam, both are serving “substitute” sentences — for nonpayment of financial penalties — at the Wöllstein-Rohrbach prison in Rhineland-Palatinate. Susan van der Hijden was given a 115-day sentence, resulting from Büchel actions in 2018 and 2019.

Crane was convicted September 20, 2021, in Koblenz Regional Court in Germany on six counts of trespass stemming from repeated protests against the nuclear weapons “forward deployed” by the United States at Büchel, 80 miles southeast of Cologne.

A third resister, Gerd Büntzly, a musician and composer from Herford, has been sentenced to 90 days and expects to serve 45. It will be Büntzly’s fifth incarceration for actions at Büchel.

Büchel houses approximately 10-20 U.S. Air Force thermonuclear gravity bombs known as B61s, which have been transferred to Germany in violation of explicit prohibitions set out in the 1970 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Many of the resisters have argued in their defense at trial that interference with the nuclear air base is “crime prevention” done to uphold and enforce the treaty.

Germany’s public prosecutor in Koblenz has objected that even if “nuclear sharing” were illegal, the only relevant facts at trial are related to trespassing and possible damage to fencing, in spite of the supremacy of international treaty law. Crane was sentenced to either pay 1,150 euros ($1,119), or serve 229 days in prison. Crane’s appeal to Germany’s Constitutional Court was dismissed without comment.

Crane has worked for decades at the Catholic Worker where she supports people in poverty who are often homeless. She said in a statement, “When I look at Büchel air base, I see nothing but the organization of death … At the same time, I see the suffering of people around the world who lack basic needs that could be available if our economies weren’t based on war-making.”

Last year, the first ever U.S. citizens sentenced to prison in the long campaign — Dennis DuVall, formerly of Prescott, Arizona, and John LaForge, of Luck, Wisconsin — were incarcerated in Germany for several months each, after they likewise refused to pay fines imposed for Büchel protest convictions.

Beginning May 30, about 30 nuclear weapons opponents from Germany, the U.S., and the Netherlands conducted a five-day solidarity walk with the prison-goers from Büchel to the prison in Rohrbach. Local activists have promised to hold a weekly vigil in front of the prison.

Büchel, and five other NATO air bases hosting U.S. B61s, are currently being upgraded to allow for the arrival of both U.S. F-35 jet fighters, and new nuclear bombs — so-called B61-12s — that are set to be transferred from the U.S. this year or next.

Cards or letters can be sent to:
Susan Crane or Susan van der Hijden, JVA Rohrbach, Peter-Caesar-Allee 1, 55597 Wöllstein, Germany

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Blocking the Doors of Nuclear Ban Treaty Blockers

By John LaForge

Jan. 22, 2024 marked the third anniversary of the coming-into-force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The TPNW now has seventy “states parties” and two dozen governments moving to see it ratified. The entry into force anniversary is celebrated all over the world as the best means of preventing accidental or deliberate detonations of the most poisonous and overwhelmingly destructive weapons in human history. (Universalization would also end today’s regular use of nuclear weapons which are employed by nine governments the way bank robbers use a pistol: without pulling the trigger, they still get the loot. It’s not deterrence but armed robbery.)

Nuclear weapons abolitionists and homeless shelter providers blockaded the doors to the U.S. Mission to the UN Nov. 30, 2023. Photo: Felton Davis, NY Catholic Worker.

So far, the nine nuclear-armed governments have dismissed the TPNW as a political annoyance, the naïve aspiration of an unschooled group of UN member states (the 122 out of 193 that voted for enactment). This neo-colonial condescension shrewdly ignores the millions of people from TPNW-friendly countries who are sick from radiation poisoning after being targeted by the nuclear mobsters’ bomb testing and uranium mining.

However, a super-majority of UN members decided that the nuclear powers must have lied when they promised in 1970, in Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) — 57 years ago — “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date”, etc., etc. After six decades, “at an early date” has become the laugh line of international law. And the phrase was of course vague enough for nuclear threat mongers to ignore it indefinitely, while asserting their lawful adherence. The U.S. state department still claims on paper, “The United States is in full compliance with all of its NPT obligations, including Article VI.”

Fed up with decades of such lip service, 122 United Nations governments took to heart Article VI’s mandate to pursue disarmament in good faith, and in 2017 they produced the TPNW. The treaty is now part of the “rules-based order” that President Biden loves to pose with.

 

Early last month, the United Nations held its second meeting of governments that have ratified the TPNW. Although held at UN headquarters in New York City, the United States stuck to its jaundiced opposition and ignored the gathering.

Nuclear weapons abolitionists including Nukewatch’s Kelly Lundeen (right) affixed a 10-ft sticker to the window of the U.S. Mission to the UN in NY. Photo: Felton Davis. 

It strikes anti-poverty activists as particularly outrageous that U.S. policy forbids participating in efforts to rid the world of the colossal expense of nuclear weapons. With 38 million U.S. citizens living in poverty, and 16% of all children in the United States — 11.6 million kids total — living in poverty, the cost of the nuclear arsenal appears obscenely vicious and unjust, not just to advocates for the homeless.

This is why a group of 18 activists, some of them homeless shelter providers with the Catholic Worker Movement, took the opportunity of the UN nuclear ban treaty meeting to risk arrest. Their action pointed the finger at U.S. rejection of the TPNW, U.S. nuclear weapons production, and its global nuclear threats.

On November 30, a group of about 45 gathered outside the U.S. mission to the UN, directly across the street from the UN. The group brought out banners and stickers and nonviolently embodied the global disgust and anger over U.S.-led opposition to abolishing nuclear weapons.

Around lunch time, the nuclear abolitionists arrived and with a novel “bumper sticker” — 10 feet by 2.5 feet — and successfully stuck it to the U.S. mission’s large plate glass front wall. They then divided into small groups that took to blockading the three entrances to the mission. This exercise in nonviolent civil resistance garnered not a peep from the commercial media which favors reporting on terrorist actions, gun violence, and VIP scandal.

The mission doors were blocked for a few hours, the New York police zip-tied and hauled the radical peaceniks off to the precinct. After 4 p.m. the 18 were released with a December court date pending. That hearing resulted mostly in suspended sentences, which is a nearly perfect irony regarding nuclear weapons, which still hang like suspended sentences over everyone.

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Two More U.S. Peace Activists Win Jail Time in Germany

By Jack Cohen-Joppa
After court, Dennis DuVall and other activists returned to the nuclear weapons base and placed a 28-foot-long copy of the nuclear ban treaty across the access road. Photo: Sjaak Tensen

Two American nuclear abolitionists will soon serve time in German prisons for their nonviolent actions opposing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiled at Germany’s Büchel air base.

Susan Crane, age 80, was sentenced in September, 2022 for a series of fence-cutting actions and occupations of the Büchel base beginning in 2018, and ordered to pay a fine equivalent to 229 days in prison. Crane, a Catholic Worker in Redwood City, California, refused to pay, and was notified by the court to report to prison in Germany on June 4.

After sentencing, Crane said, “When I look at Büchel air base, I see nothing but the organization of death … At the same time, I see the suffering of people around the world who lack basic needs that could be met if our economies weren’t based on war-making. … [I]f we are to continue life on this planet, we need to disarm.”

Meanwhile, Dennis DuVall, who already served a 60-day sentence in the spring of 2023 for protests at Büchel, was back in a German court on January 22, coincidentally also the third anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The 82-year-old Vietnam War veteran, now living in Germany, was charged for the “Atom Bomb Crime Scene” graffiti he’d painted in hot pink across the base’s entrance road last summer.

Despite DuVall’s clear and calm defense that he acted to expose criminal preparations for mass murder, he was sentenced to a fine equal to 90 days in prison. Like Crane, he told the court he will not pay, and expects to eventually be sent back to prison.

Supporter Frits ter Kuile wrote, “It was a sad display. An elder man warning with great clarity for the End of Time in his own end time and those blind figures in their black gowns standing on the wrong side of history for the umpteenth time.”

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