Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Aug 29, 2008, 12:35PM

Berkley Activists Raided By FBI

A student activist hangout at UC Berkley was raided by the FBI this week and several computers were confiscated, allegedly because of threatening emails. Berkley has a long history of radical politics, including most recently a protracted struggle over cutting down oak trees between environmentalists and the school administration.

Two days after University of California Police Department and members of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force raided a community cooperative where social activists often gather, community members say they are still in the dark as to why the officers seized dozens of computers and data storage devices believed to be the source of threatening e-mails.

Campus officials said that "more than a few" threatening e-mails were sent from the Long Haul Infoshop to UC Berkeley faculty and staff, leading the campus to seek a search warrant for various data storage devices at the shop.

While threatening e-mails to the campus are generally not that common, most of the recent ones are about "hot-button issues" like the tree-sit and animal research, said campus spokesperson Robert Sanders.

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According to Assistant Police Chief Mitch Celaya, UCPD, the main investigators of the threatening e-mails have been working with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force on the case.

The shop provides free Internet to community members as well as meeting space for local liberal groups like Food Not Bombs and the Anarchist Study Group.

Police confiscated 15 computers and various flash memory drives, memory cards and CDs. Nearly all of the items, except some used exclusively by shop volunteers, had been designated for public use.

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