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At first inspection the ruling might appear soft: most were acquitted, two defendants only receive a suspended sentence and another two receive fines. The defendants were all acquitted of the most serious charge – the accusation of attacking parliament and some conspiracy thereof. So everyone should be mightily relieved, or what?

No: not at all. The only ruling that would have been acceptable would have been total acquittal.

This ruling proves that the authorities have dragged nine people through the mire of the judicial process inventing charges to do so – stigmatized them for serious offenses and decreed that civil society, democracy and law and order have been put at risk by these people. An accusation many right-wing bloggers have taken up without hesitation. Even unbalanced ex-ministers have asserted that the group of nine protesters intended to stage a coup d’état. But when push came to shove, none of these accusations stuck, and it was visible beforehand, by everyone and yet it was decided to prosecute these people, on behalf of parliament’s bureau chief (Helgi Bernódusson) and the state prosecution, for a very serious offense which bears the minimum penalty of a year behind bars, an accusation everyone could see had nothing whatever to do with events on the 8th of December 2008.

The Reykjavik District Court’s ruling therefore discredits greatly parliament’s Bureau Chief as well as the State Prosecution.

Despite the acquittal regarding the most serious charges, the State Prosecution have nonetheless been able to hold the nine captive in the trappings of the legal system for two years: It is therefore absurd to maintain that “justice has been served” when it is proven that innocent civilians have been accused of highly serious crimes without justification – accusations that have since been mooted. We cannot tolerate the fact that the authorities can frivolously charge people whenever they dare to exercise their right to protest. It is water of a ducks back for the authorities to fund judges, prosecution and court guards to populate some trial room circus. But the same does not apply to ordinary citizens forced to play a part in such a circus.

It is worth noting that the judge rules that two defendants are to pay fines and four defendants are to pay legal expenses totaling 800.000 ISK. For ordinary citizens these are no small sums of money, and if this is the precedent, people who take part in protests can be charged, convicted and judged to pay fines and legal expenses, so it becomes a question of whether people can actually afford to protest.