Blockade Australia: Nine co-accused from Colo raid get bail break
Nine people charged over their alleged involvement in a Blockade Australia camp which police said left them “fearing for their lives” have had their bail conditions loosened. See why they’re now allowed to communicate with fellow activists.
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Nine people before the courts over their alleged involvement in a Blockade Australia camp which police said left them “fearing for their lives” have had their bail conditions eased, allowing them to engage with fellow group members online.
Police allege on June 19 plain clothes police officers raided a remote bushland property in Colo in Sydney’s northwest outskirts as part of ongoing investigations into disruptive protests planned by the environmental activists.
According to police, the officers were swarmed by members of the campsite who used physical force to stop them from leaving by jumping on the bonnet of the police car and letting its tyres down.
With the officers “fearing for their life” tactical support was called in to help extradite police from the property, which included two senior constables, police allege.
The defendants — aged between 20 and 67 — are facing various charges relating to their alleged individual involvement in the incidents, including two counts of assaulting police officers and four counts of affray.
Anne Vickers, Hannah Doole, Joseph Rohan, Marco Bellemo, Clancey Smith, Daniel Heggie, Maxim Curmi, Nicholas Weaver and Timothy Neville were granted bail in June and are currently scattered across NSW.
As part of their bail conditions, the accused were barred from engaging in any Blockade Australia networking group or communication online.
Defence lawyer Mark Davis, who is representing all of the accused, successfully argued this condition was inappropriate, impractical, too vague, and questioned what it actually meant.
“What are networking groups and what is communication?” Mr Davis asked the court.
“Bail needs to be practical, this is almost impossible to comply with. If there’s no surety of what the court is asking you’re in great danger of breaching it.”
Mr Davis also said the strict nature of the bail conditions were because of NSW Police’s “major ambition” to shut down a Blockade protest previously planned for June 27.
“If you can trace the heritage of this bail requirement it’s legacy is in a prior police concern,” he said.
“They were camped on private property, this is not them engaging in some provocative act in public or in Sydney [which are] all the things police were concerned about.”
The police prosecutor argued the condition was intended to mitigate the risk of the defendants planning future protests, and if lifted they could find loopholes with “weasel words” and “codified language”.
He also warned the court about the potential slow erosion of bail conditions.
“Drip, drip. Over time the bail conditions are slowly eroded away by variation upon variation to the point they don’t really when the text they were intended for.”
The accused are barred from entering Sydney’s CBD and participating or planning any unlawful protest events.
The magistrate accepted the bail variation saying he was satisfied the concern of risk to the community was covered in the other bail conditions set out for the nine accused.
The matters will return to Parramatta court on December 13 for a hearing.
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