Hunt supporters must pay compensation (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Hunt supporters must pay compensation

3:32pm Tuesday 20th November 2007 in News By Gazette Reporter

A pair of hunt supporters have been ordered to pay £350 to a saboteur after admitting stealing her camera.

Malcolm Scobie, 41, and David Gibbons, 52, had been charged with robbing Melanie Bates during the incident on Wednesday October 5 2005.

But on the day of trial at Swindon crown court the two men pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of theft.

And Judge Douglas Field imposed one year conditional discharges on the men and ordered they each pay £175 compensation to the owner of the camera.

Miss Bates, from Reading, Berks, was using her camera to get footage of the Avon Vale hunt near Melksham.

She claimed that Scobie, of Spye Park, Lacock and Gibbons, of Padfield Gardens, Melksham, had robbed her of the device.

Video footage from other anti hunt activists was used in the prosecution against the two men.

But the robbery charges were dropped when the two men admitted the theft of the camera.