WASHINGTON: In a rebuke to the US Justice Department, a federal judge in Miami has thrown out a criminal case against environmental group Greenpeace , a prosecution that was watched closely by other progressive organizations that say they are under threat from the Bush administration.

US District Judge Adalberto Jordan acquitted the group at the end of the prosecution's case on Wednesday, the third day of the jury trial, for protesting against a ship that carried 70 tons of illegally cut mahogany. He said the prosecution, which based the action on an obscure 1872 law, had failed to provide enough evidence for the case to go to the jury.

"America's tradition of free speech won a victory today," said John Passacantando, Greenpeace executive director, "but our liberties are still not safe. The Bush administration and its allies seem bent on stifling our tradition of civil protest, a tradition that has made our country stronger throughout our history."

The case, which marked the first time a non-governmental organization (NGO) had been indicted by the federal government for the protest activities of its members, drew considerable national and even international attention. Former vice-president Al Gore and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy were among a number of prominent individuals and groups that protested the prosecution.

It was triggered by an April 2002 protest in which two volunteers from a Greenpeace vessel boarded the APL Jade cargo ship, which was carrying the mahogany from Brazil toward the Port of Miami.

Just a few months before, President George W. Bush himself publicly committed Washington to help developing countries prevent illegal logging of mahogany, and the two activists who boarded the ship unfurled a banner that read, "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging."

The two activists, as well as the four others in the Greenpeace boat, were arrested when they came into port, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour, and spent a weekend in jail. But 15 months later, the Justice Department filed an indictment in Miami against Greenpeace itself under the 1872 law, which had last been used in 1890.

The statute was originally intended to keep houses of prostitution and rum shops from luring sailors on incoming ships to shore with promises of women and grog, and the judge decided the case on a technicality.

As the boarding took place about six miles from port, according to Jordan, it did not meet the statutory requirement that it was "about to arrive", suggesting that he might have ruled differently on the motion to dismiss had the boat been much closer when the protest occurred.-Dawn/The InterPress News Service.