PROTESTERS who allegedly broke into an aircraft plant carrying a child's coffin go on trial in Lytham next Wednesday (April 16).

The seven members of the Stop the Hawks campaign are alleged to have scaled the fence of British Aerospace, Warton, on December 29 last year.

They were charged with trespass on a civil aerodrome.

It is claimed they carried the coffin, containing a child's rattle, flowers and photos of slaughtered East Timorese people, as a symbolic gesture, intending to bury it in a religious service.

The trial, expected to last two days, follows a similar demonstration by a priest, three of his parishioners and four East Timorese refugees, on Easter Monday.

The preliminary hearing was last Friday (April 4).

The group is campaigning against the export of BAe Hawk jets to Indonesia, claiming they are used to bomb East Timor, where 200,000 have been killed since Indonesia occupied the island in 1975.

The UN has condemned the occupation.

Campaign supporters - many of whom are members of the Catholic Workers community - are expected to be out in force, holding a vigil around the Bannister Street court building while the case is being heard.

The defendants are expected to plead not guilty.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.