Two animal rights activists each face three years in prison after pleading guilty to federal weapons charges. The two, linked by prosecutors to the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), were arrested for possession of “11 one-gallon containers and enough gasoline to fill them, along with matches and candles.” An aberration? No. Rather, a relatively low-key incident for the notorious ALF.
On the very day of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, ALF took credit for firebombing a Tucson McDonald’s. ALF set fire to a Coulston Foundation primate research facility in New Mexico nine days later. Working closely with the Earth Liberation Front, ALF radicals have also set off firebombs at meat companies and feed mills. And in 1999, the group’s British wing even kidnapped a journalist at gunpoint, tortured him with a branding iron, and threatened to harm his family — all because he reported on their extreme activities. All this has led the FBI to declare: “By any sense or any definition this is a true domestic terrorism group that uses criminal activity to further their political agenda.”
Threats of violence are a tool not just of the shadowy ALF, but the visible and “mainstream” animal rights group PETA as well. In July, PETA’s Bruce Friedrich said, “It would be great if all the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks who fund them exploded tomorrow.”
The Center For Consumer Freedom tracks PETA, ALF, and other extremist groups vigilantly. For more on animal rights terrorism and other radical anti-consumer-choice actions, read our most recent Consumer Freedom Newsletter.
