Trio guilty of stealing puppies bred for research

Three men who stole five puppies from a facility that breeds animals for laboratory research defended their actions as they walked free from court.

The break-in happened at MBR Acres in Wyton, near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on 20 June 2022.

Daniel Kidby, 34, Ben Newman, 35, and Beau Sebastien, 46, denied burglary. They were found guilty by a majority verdict at Cambridge Crown Court on Thursday.

Kidby and Sebastien received conditional discharges, while Newman was given a 21-month jail sentence, suspended for two years.

Speaking before their sentencing, Kidby, of St Michael's Place, Stroud, Gloucestershire, said: "We rescued five beautiful beagle puppies and I believe it was an honest and morally right thing to do... we didn't steal them, we rescued them."

Newman, of Wintergreen Court, Hackney, London, added while the rescue was "the primary motivation... public awareness about what is happening [at MBR Acres] is a good thing".

Sebastien, of Byng Road, High Barnet, London, said: "When we saw the dogs... we just had to act, so I definitely am not a burglar. I just rescued a dog and I think anyone would do it in our position, I really do."

Kidby was given a 21-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £1,000 costs while Sebastien was given a 15-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £500 costs.

Newman was ordered to pay £1,000 costs and told to undertake 180 hours of unpaid work.

This was the last in a series of trials connected to burglaries at MBR Acres, which saw nine defendants found guilty of burglary and nine found not guilty.

During sentencing, Judge Grey told the men they had "deliberately misused the criminal justice system for your own purposes" and said there was "an intellectual arrogance in the certainty of some of the beliefs you have expressed".

He said the men would be aware "the criminal justice system is under the most severe strain, with severe backlogs in work" in which "defendants, victims and witnesses have the agony of waiting all that time for their cases to be heard".

"The stances taken by the defendants across all five of the trials relating to MBR Acres have in my judgment amounted to a blockade of the crown court," he said.

"You have used up weeks and weeks of crown court time and a huge amount of public funds."

The three men, part of a group called Animal Rising, told the jury they were motivated by compassion towards dogs in distress.

During the trial, the prosecution argued it was a publicity stunt which lasted more than a week.

Mitchell Cohen told the court: "They wanted to break the law. They wanted to get caught. They wanted to be prosecuted.

"They wanted to garner all the publicity they could... through the criminal justice system."

They believed "what they were doing was justified and therefore not dishonest by their subjective view", Cohen said.

"But objectively... were those beliefs honest by the subjective standards of society as a whole?"

Kidby, who represented himself, told the court that "rescuing those dogs was one of the best things I have ever done".

Newman, also representing himself, said in court that he "saw dogs in distress and I was moved to help".

Maria Liddiard, for Sebastien, told the jury: "If this was all about publicity, aren't there easier ways to get attention?

"He made no effort to evade security," she added, and he had immediately handed himself to the police.

A spokesperson for Marshal BioResources, which owns MBR Acres, said: "We are a Home Office-licensed specialist breeding facility, responsible for raising healthy, well-cared for dogs for use in regulated biomedical research conducted elsewhere under strict UK law.

"Our professional animal-care teams are focused exclusively on providing high standards of animal care and welfare.

"Animals involved in biomedical research must be specially bred and raised under strict welfare standards. Our facilities are heavily regulated and regularly inspected by the Home Office."

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