October 1998: British Animal Rights Activists Kidnap, Brand Journalist

Graham Hall’s back, branded with the letters ALF. [Source: The Mail on Sunday]British reporter Graham Hall, who in 1998 infiltrated a British cell of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) with a hidden camera and captured footage of ALF’s British spokesman Robin Webb giving a bomb-making manual to activists and suggesting a target, is abducted, apparently by ALF members. They blindfold Hall and threaten to kill him, then brand the letters ALF on his back before throwing him out of a van onto a deserted road. Hall produced a documentary, Inside the ALF, that portrayed the organization as violent and extremist. Webb says the documentary was heavily and selectively edited, and says of the branding, “People who make a living in this way have to expect from time to time to take the consequences of their actions.” The British television network that aired the documentary, Channel 4, has offered to pay for plastic surgery for Hall, who considers himself an animal rights supporter but finds ALF’s tactics too extreme. Police refuse to prosecute Webb and other ALF members, who in Hall’s film boast of numerous bombings and arson attacks. Hall says of the ALF members he encountered: “Even I underestimated them. They are highly organized and totally obsessed—they’ll stop at nothing. That conflict is now out of hand and ready to explode.… I have been badly shaken by this but it will not deter me from carrying on. I will not rest until I bring these men to justice… and it won’t be the sort of justice they deal in. They are terrorists, not animal rights campaigners. They can’t function without violence. They have done this to me because I hurt them with my film. They wanted to get back at me, pure and simple.… One day I will infiltrate the ALF again. And next time they won’t get away with it.” [The Mail on Sunday, 11/7/1999; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]