Indymedia Journalist banned from Shannon

Wednesday February 05, 2003 18:10

by C. - IMC

Eamonn Crudden, an IMC journalist and independent film maker, has been served an interlocutory injunction in the high court preventing him from entering the grounds of Shannon Airport without the permission of the director of Aer Rianta.

He is the only journalist so named - despite large numbers of other media personnel spending time in Shannon, following the story that Eamonn and other IMC contributors have been covering for a number of months. The grounds given were trespass - although Aer Rianta presented no evidence of this. Mr Crudden admitted in his affadivit that he had followed the protestors through the fence for the purpose of filming them at a previous direct action.

His exclusion differs from that of other cases as these were served an injunction from trespassing on private aer rianta land. Mr Crudden is not alloweed enter any part of the airport - including those open to the public. He is appealing this ruling on the grounds of press freedom.

A bad day for irish democracy - the peace camp is replaced by the army and now the journalist who has been most consistently covering the shanon airport story has been barred from the area.