Call to stop trial of Owen Wilkes

Press, 1 June 1981, Page 2

Call to stop trial of Owen Wilkes

By

KEN COATES

in London

During the third and final week of the trial of a New Zealander,, Owen Wilkes, and a; Norwegian, ANiis Petter Gieditsch, the peace activists received support in a large advertisement in a Liberal national daily newspaper, “Dagbladet,”

“Freedom for research — drop the case against Gieditsch and Wilkes,” was the headline above 750 names, of which the peace scientist, Professor Johan Galtung, a professor of criminology, Thomas Mathiesen. a politician, Gunnar Garbo, and Professor Ottar Brox, of the University of Tromso, twere the most prominent.

The 250 international names also published were dominated by celebrities in political science and social research in Europe and the United States.

They included three British members of Parliament, Anthony Wedgewood Benn, Fenner Brockway and Tony Gifford; Mr Phillip Agee, author of “Inside the Company — C.I.A. Diary”; Professor Hakan Wiberg, of Sweden's University of Lund; Yoshikazu Sakamoto, general secretary of the International Peace Research Organisation; and a British investigative journalist for the “New Statesman,” Duncan Campbell. Yet no amount of pressure is likely to influence the

Norwegian, authorities to drop the case, which. “Dagbladet” has hinted, is heavily weighted against the accused.

“When the two military experts supporting the prosecution attacked a witness for the defence, Professor Hakan Wiberg, the judge overruled the complaints of the defence counsel,” said the newspaper. “But when the third military witness, a former intelligence expert and major, asked questions which embarrassed the Chief of the General Staff, he was reprimanded by the Judge.”

Earlier in the week, two other military experts, one a former colonel and the other now employed by a weapons manufacturer, discussed the controversial report by Wilkes and Gieditsch.

They doubted that the Russians had any prior knowledge of the nine electronic surveillance stations detailed in the report before Wilkes and Gieditsch made their observations known. “The antennae could hardly be seen from Soviet satellites, which cost an enormous amount of money, and the Russians would not have the same opportunities for gathering information in Norway,” one of the experts said. Their conclusion was that the report was damaging to Norway’s national security. A third military expert, a former major and now a

high school teacher, Anders Hellebust, countered these remarks when he emphasised that it was meaningless to assume that the Soviets knew little about the intelligence stations.

“The Soviet Union willgo to any lengths and spend any amount of money to find out what it wants,” he said. "The Soviets’ satellite observations will give them enough information to make more detailed survdys from reconnaissance planes and ships.

"It is already known that many of the personnel in the Soviet Embassy are employed as spies and probably tap the telephones of Norwegian intelligence agents.” Wilkes decided during the week to return to Stockholm where he is occupied on projects concerning anti-sub-marine warfare and the verification of the S-.A.L.T. II treaty.

Ironically, he is also working on a report on worldwide foreign military presence, to be published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute later this year.

This will list 40 American bases in Norway, including the nine stations discussed in the court case. Even though anyone could learn of them by looking at the published report, they were not allowed to be mentioned by name in the court.