Jail for animal rights activists

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

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".

The campaign used threats such as claiming that managers of companies which supplied Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) were paedophiles.

Homes of staff, and firms, had hoax bomb parcels sent to them or received threatening telephone calls. Threats of violence were also used to force companies to cut links with HLS.

Words like "puppy killer" and "scum" were painted on homes and cars of workers, cars were paint stripped, and used sanitary towels were posted to the victims with a note saying the sender had Aids.

The aim was to target suppliers or any company with a secondary link with HLS, and the campaign would only stop when the company put out a "capitulation statement" saying it would end links.