Six people have been found not guilty of causing a public nuisance during animal rights protests at the 2023 Grand National race meeting.<\/p>\n
A total of 118 people were arrested in connection with the protests after attempts were made to stop the race.<\/p>\n
Six protestors from the Animal Rising campaign group were found not guilty of intentionally and recklessly causing a public nuisance in connection with the protests on 15 April 2023.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the hearing at Liverpool Crown Court, one of the defendants, Sarah McCaffrey, 22, from Strathaven, Scotland, said: “It’s vital that peaceful, legitimate protest against suffering and injustice is permitted in the UK.” <\/p>\n
The others cleared were Lewis Elliott, 32, from Sheffield; Marcus Emmerson, 29, from Worcester; Calum Marshall, 27, from Edinburgh; Imogen Robertson, 24, from the Bridge of Allan and Zara Verryt, 26, from Sheffield.<\/p>\n
Ms McCaffrey said: “The verdict today shows that the general public supports the protection of horses.”<\/p>\n
She said more than 400 horses had died in races since they tried to halt the Grand National and called on the government to ban horse racing. <\/p>\n
Animal Rising said that during the trial they had successfully argued that their concern for the lives and welfare of horses provided a justifiable reason for their actions.<\/p>\n
They said a further four trials involving protestors were due to to take place, with the next scheduled to begin on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six people have been found not guilty of causing a public nuisance during animal rights protests at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-448589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115260811162131577","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}