The jailing of Pat O’Donnell in Ireland for seven months for “obstructing a Garda” seems an appalling attempt to end local environmental opposition to a massive Shell pipeline project. Having seen so much of Shell’s appalling bullying of local communities in the Niger Delta, I did not really expect to see the same behaviour in Ireland.
A few months ago masked thugs attacked Pat and his brother and sank his fishing boat, thus ruining his livelihood. The Garda did nothing. Now they have arrested him for demonstrating, and a complicit judiciary has given a sentence for peaceful opposition activity that belongs in Uzbekistan, not in Ireland.