UW arson trial opens today

Of the five men and women accused of gathering in an Olympia home seven years ago to plot the firebombing of a University of Washington research center, one is dead, one is a fugitive and two others await sentencing after reaching plea agreements.

Monday, the fifth suspect faces a federal jury in Tacoma.

	Briana Waters, a music teacher, is accused of being a lookout.

Prosecutors say Briana Waters acted as a lookout while the others torched the Center for Urban Horticulture before dawn May 21, 2001. The blaze consumed rare and endangered plants, wiped out years of research and severely damaged the complex, which cost $7 million to rebuild.

The arsonists set the fire because they mistakenly believed that the center contained genetically engineered trees.

Waters, a 32-year-old music teacher who had been attending The Evergreen State College at the time of the attack, has no criminal record. She faces a mandatory minimum prison term of 35 years if convicted of using a firebomb to commit arson, conspiracy and other charges.

She was one of more than a dozen people arrested by the FBI in recent years in a series of arson and vandalism attacks across the West. They are accused of being members of an Earth Liberation Front/Animal Liberation Front cell called "The Family." Highly educated, white and largely middle-class, they shared an intense desire to save the planet from environmental degradation and animal exploitation.

The ELF/ALF ideology overlaps with anarchists in that it sees nothing less than the collapse of basic societal structures as the path to global salvation.

A 65-count indictment unsealed two years ago accused The Family -- whose members lived in Seattle, Olympia, Eugene, Ore., and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest -- of torching 17 targets, including a ski resort in Vail, Colo., and a U.S. Agriculture Department lab in Olympia, both in 1998.

Federal authorities say that on the same night in 2001, the ELF cell firebombed the horticulture center and set off a nearly identical time-delayed incendiary device at Jefferson Poplar Farms in Clatskanie, Ore.

Confronted with decades behind bars if convicted, most of those accused in the arson have accepted plea bargains -- and reduced prison terms.

In the UW case, defendant Justin Solondz, Waters' former boyfriend and the accused bomb maker, remains a fugitive. William Rogers killed himself in an Arizona jail cell while awaiting extradition to Seattle. Jennifer Kolar and Lacey Phillabaum have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Waters in exchange for lesser sentences.

The only alleged member of The Family to go to trial, Waters has maintained her innocence. She remains free on bond in Oakland, Calif., where she gives violin lessons and shares a home with her young daughter, Kalliope, and her partner, a carpenter.

Waters was an "environmental activist -- above ground, totally legal," said her lawyer, Robert Bloom. "She was not involved in ELF activities. She never went to any of the meetings the government talks about."

Her activism, Bloom said, led her to produce "Watch," a 2001 documentary about controversial plans by a timber company to clearcut an old-growth forest at Watch Mountain near Randle in Lewis County.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett said authorities have "totally destroyed the ALF-ELF terrorist group" that had been operating unchecked in the Northwest for many years.

"That group is dismantled, in jail, and is not a threat to the public," he said. "This trial, however, is important because we firmly believe that all individuals involved in these arsons should be held accountable."

Bloom has a history of representing political activists. His answering machine message at his Oakland office takes a swipe at the Iraq war. And he is not shy about sharing his political perspective in this case.

"They like to throw the term 'terrorist' out there to scare the jurors," Bloom said. "That's been the constant tactic of the Bush administration. And that's what they are doing here."

Bloom said the ELF extremists-turned-government witnesses simply can't be believed.

"Kolar has admitted to two arsons which would have brought a mandatory life sentence" if she had not agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, he said. "That's a lot of pressure to give the government what they want. ... It will be up to the jury, when they hear all the evidence, to decide whether they can believe these witnesses beyond any reasonable doubt."

Bloom has also accused the prosecution and FBI agents of misconduct by trying to hide evidence favorable to Waters.

U.S. District Judge Franklin Burgess, who is presiding over the case, has repeatedly rejected Bloom's allegation, ruling that it's "not supported" by the facts and that Bloom jumped to conclusions.

The trial could last up to four weeks, with testimony from dozens of witnesses.