Associated Press / By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer
MONTPELLIER, France (AP) - A French sheep farmer who became famous for his fight against globalization was in court Thursday to appeal a three-month jail sentence for ransacking a McDonald's restaurant.
Jose Bove, 47, rose to fame in August 1999 when he and nine others used farm equipment to dismantle a McDonald's that was under construction in Millau, in the foothills of France's Massif Central mountains. Last September, a Millau court sentenced him to three months in prison.
His appeal is expected to run through Friday, though the court was unlikely to render a decision immediately.
At the trial last year, Bove and his co-defendants argued that French farmers had been "taken hostage" by a U.S. decision to slap sanctions on a string of European luxury products, which included Roquefort cheese, a product of the Millau region in southern France. They argued that their only recourse was radical action.
The sanctions, backed by the World Trade Organization, were a counter measure to protest Europe's rejection of U.S. hormone-treated beef.
"Eighteen months later, we are still victims of the American surtaxes," Bove said Thursday. "The WTO is running our lives."
The mustachioed, pipe-smoking Bove - nicknamed "Robin Hood" by his fans - is involved in three separate trials this month in Montpellier.
On Feb. 9. a prosecutor asked a court to sentence Bove to three months in prison for raiding a research greenhouse and destroying more than 1,000 genetically altered rice plants in June 1999. The court has yet to rule on that.
Separately Thursday, a Montpellier prosecutor was appealing a judge's decision not to convict Bove on charges of briefly holding captive three Agriculture Ministry officials at a government building in Rodez, France, in 1999.:
