Water Protectors are escorted out of an Enbridge Line 3 pump station after being arrested near Park Rapids, Minn., on June 7, 2021. Photo: Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio/AP
REPORTED BY THE INTERCEPT: PROSECUTORS HIT ANTI-PIPELINE PROTESTERS WITH FELONY CHARGES TO SEND A MESSAGE, DEFENSE SAYS
One county prosecutor asked oil company Enbridge for reimbursement to help with some of the prosecutions clogging up rural courts.
BY Alleen Brown, Sam Richards
January 8 2022
When the oil company Enbridge sought to build its Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, it faced opposition from Indigenous-led water protectors. The company moved to coordinate with local police as they cracked down on the resistance.
MONTHS AFTER THE pipeline company Enbridge announced it had finished its Line 3 pipeline, hundreds of the project’s opponents have pending court cases for arrests made at protests during last year’s construction.
Defense attorneys for the water protectors, as the members of the Indigenous-led anti-pipeline movement are known, said many of the charges are overly aggressive and should be dismissed. Defense attorneys pointed to examples like felony theft charges for protesters who chained themselves to equipment and felony aiding attempted suicide for those who crawled into sections of nonfunctional pipe.
“These felony theft charges started coming out during the summer and it’s very clearly an abuse of the prosecutorial charging function,” said Joshua Preston, a lawyer for the water protectors. “It’s meant to send a message saying, ‘If you come to this property and chain yourself to something, we’re going to throw the book at you.’”
One of the county attorneys pursuing felony theft charges said the indictments were appropriate. “Criminal felony theft meets the elements of the offense,” Hubbard County, Minnesota, Attorney Jonathan Frieden told the Intercept.
The criminal trials are the coda to a years long fight over the pipeline in Minnesota between water protectors, on the one hand, and the pipeline company and police on the other. Tensions flared, with Minnesota community members pitted against each other — partly owing to what pipeline opponents said was a “corporate counterinsurgency” against their movement, a set of military-style tactics barred by the oil company’s permit.
CENTER FOR PROTEST LAW & LITIGATION EXPOSED
The Center for Protest Law & Litigation has obtained documents showing that the lead prosecutor in Hubbard County, Minnesota - who is seeking to jail hundreds of peaceful Line 3 water protectors - sought Enbridge pipeline company $$$ to fund his prosecutions.
We are releasing the documents on our website showing an initial bill - and outrage when he didn't get what he wanted. The expectation of $$ incentivized the wrongful charging of hundreds. Oil money & the corruption of justice.
The so-called Public Safety Escrow Trust has funneled millions of dollars of Enbridge money to law enforcement in Minnesota, incentivizing the repression of water protectors at Line 3.
Visit the link below for the full documents.
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