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

By John LaForge

German and U.S. nuclear weapons resisters continue their quixotic jousting match with the criminal justice system. Emphasis on the word criminal.

After dozens of “go-in” actions against the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons at Germany’s Büchel air base, and following scores of trial court convictions for “trespassing” at the NATO base, twenty individual appeals to Germany’s high-level Constitutional Court have now been rejected without comment. The high court has simply upheld the rulings of the Regional Court in Koblenz finding the resisters guilty. Koblenz judges have repeatedly found that secret arrangements between the U.S. and Germany have legalized the shipment to and deployment of U.S. nuclear bombs at Büchel.

Nuclear abolitionists, including Nukewatch’s John LaForge and many others, have argued that binding U.S. and German treaty law forbids any and all such transfer of nuclear weapons (known as nuclear proliferation), and consequently that nonviolent actions attempting to interfere with such violations are justifiable acts of “crime prevention.”

As of September, a total of six nuclear resisters have filed applications or appeals with the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France, arguing that the convictions were in error. The ECHR, made up of 42 judges, one from every state party to the European Convention on Human Rights, has a rigid set of standards to be met to win a hearing, and defendants must first have exhausted all the means of redress in their state and federal courts.

In LaForge’s appeal to the ECHR, filed in May, the court has indicated some interest in the case, but has not yet formally decided to hear it. In June, the court wrote that one signature and one document were missing from the application. “Normally this would mean that your application would be rejected,” the court said. “However, in view of the particular circumstances of the case, you are requested, on an exceptional basis, to complete your file” and supply the needed information by August 7.

After receiving the required materials, the Legal Secretary wrote on October 9, “The court will deal with the case … as soon as the course of business permits.”

In late September, John joined German anti-nuclear bicyclists in a public protest ride between the two high courts. Beginning with a rally at the doors of the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany, sixteen riders spent two days cycling to Strasbourg and the gates of the ECHR, just across the Rhine River border separating Germany and France.

In front of both court complexes, group members spoke of the increasing dangers and legal nihilism of nuclear sharing, and a small troupe performed a theatrical piece called “Wake Up Justice!” in which a sleepy, inattentive “Madame Justice,” portrayed by Lies Welker (pictured outside the Constitutional Court), was woken by the shouts and cries of citizens demanding that she do something about the threats to humanity posed by the nuclear war planners.