‘Conditional’ sentence for Owen Wilkes

Press, 9 June 1982, Page 5

‘Conditional’ sentence for Owen Wilkes

From

KEN COATES

London The New Zealand peace researcher Owen Wilkes has been given a conditional sentence — which means that he will not be jailed — but cannot return to Sweden within the next 10 years in a Svea (court of appeals) verdict announced .yesterday. Last January he was sentenced by a Stockholm town court to six months' jail to be followed by deportation for gross unauthorised access to secret information. He now has until July 5 to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court. Sweden's highest court of appeal.

Tam not satisfied with the decision." said Mr Wilkes yesterday. "The Court of Appeals is not returning my documents which include notes, sketches and photographs. “This gives the impression that my material is secret. The whole thing seems like a cover-up job and authority is obviously worried over the implications of recent activity on' the islands of Gotland

and Oland." During the Court of Appeals trial, a journalist from the radical publication. "Etc", flew to Gotland, hired a car and in one day drove round the route cycled by Mr Wilkes.

"Etc" eventually printed more photographs than Mr Wilkes had taken of radar antennae and towers, as well as a location map of eight of the defence sites he had observed.

Paradoxically. place names published by “Etc" had- been kept secret in the court hearing.

On Whitsun week-end. 70 peace activists on cycles covered Mr Wilkes’s route, stopping at a distance to photograph the electronic towers.

In turn, they were photographed by the police who told a journalist the cyclists were not committing any crime.

Last week, the syndicalist newspaper. ' "Arbetaren." published an account of this trip:

"It illustrated the article with much better photographs of three towers than I

had taken myself." Mr Wilkes said. Neither "Etc" nor "Arbetaren" have suffered any direct reaction from authority. the criminal police seemingly content not to prosecute. suggesting a difference of opinion between them and security police about the importance of defence sites. In Oslo, a Norwegian peace scientist. Nils Petter Gleditsch. who was fined the equivalent of SNZ4OOO with Mr Wilkes last March for publishing material about electronic surveillance stations in Norway, described the Stockholm’ verdict as "weird." He said it seemed like a suspended sentence, but the actual terms of the sentence were not clear.

The whole process had been a terrifying blow for peace research in Sweden, and it was debatable whether many peace researchers could have withstood the pressure with the same composure as Mr Wilkes since he had been arrested by security police last August. Mr Wilkes is at present studying the details of his

sentence with his lawyer. Hans-Foran Franck, and planning his next move. Legal experts in Stockholm say that the conditional sentence, which has no term attached to it. can be regarded as a warning. They also regard the chances of success in the Supreme Administrative Court as good. Of the 15 pages which comprise the judgment, six are from a dissenting judge who says it was not a serious crime’and he favours a fine of the equivalent of SNZ7SO and the deportation order dropped. The chief prosecutor. Mr K. G. Svensson, has previously informed journalists that’ he is tired of the whole affair, though at the same time he has also said- if Mr Wilkes was treated lightly at the Court of Appeals, he would take the case to the Supreme Administrative Court.

Mr Wilkes plans to leave Sweden temporarily in a month's time and return for a visit to Christchurch and his collective ownership farm at Wangapeka in southwest Nelson.