Animal rights activists who targeted Ribble Valley man jailed

The six-year international conspiracy between 2001 and 2007 targeted firms across the UK and Europe that either supplied or had secondary links with Huntingdon Life Sciences in Cambridge.

Bill Denison, who lives in the Ribble Valley, gave evidence during the trial at Winchester Crown Court about how grafitti was daubed on his home labelling him a murderer and that he was called a paedophile.

His workplace, F2 Chemicals, near Preston, was also targeted with a hoax bomb.

The leaders of the blackmail conspiracy, Gregg Avery, 41, Natasha Avery, 39, and Heather Nicholson, 41, were founder members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac) which was a front organisation which organised strategy and attacks on the firms and their staff, often under the badge of the Animal Liberation Front.

They were assisted by computer expert Gavin Medd-Hall, 45, who researched the victims for Shac, and three “foot soldiers”, Gerrah Selby, 20, Daniel Wadham, 21, and Daniel Amos, 22.

Sentencing the activists at Winchester Crown Court, Mr Justice Butterfield called the campaign “urban terrorism” and a “relentless, sustained and merciless persecution” which had made the victims lives “a living hell”.

Heather Nicholson, from Eversley in Hampshire, received 11 years after she was convicted of conspiracy to blackmail at a trial last year.

Gregg Avery and his wife Natasha, also from Eversley, received nine years because they pleaded guilty to the charge.

Medd-Hall, from Croydon, south London, who was convicted at the same trial as Nicholson, received eight years.

Wadham, from Bromley, south-east London, was sentenced to five years after he was convicted last year.

Selby, from Chiswick, west London, who was convicted of the charge at the same trial as the others, received four years, and Amos from Church Crookham, Hants, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail, received four years.