Joseph Dibee, a convicted eco saboteur, is disputing the $82,497 in restitution he was sentenced to pay for a fire that was started at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wild horse corral in California.
Next Monday, Dibee’s attorney will appear before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to contest the restitution sum.
Dibee, who was charged with the offense in Portland, acknowledges that he caused property damage and is required to make amends, but he claims the Bureau of Land Management’s loss estimate is incorrect, according to a letter from his attorney, Matthew Schindler.
As part of a BLM initiative to control wild herds and avoid overpopulation, Dibee targeted the wild horse corral near Litchfield, California.
In 2001, Dibee enlisted and captured two Canadians who crossed the border illegally into the United States. On October 15, 2001, at around midnight, they drove Dibee’s truck to the scene, planned the arson, constructed incendiary devices, and then removed fences to free the wild horses.
Additionally, they place incendiary devices throughout the property. Federal prosecutors claim that only one of the explosives caught fire, setting a barn filled with bales of hay on fire.
A BLM letter that detailed the damage and replacement expenses is being contested by Dibee, who is currently 57. According to his attorney, Dibee should only be held accountable for the harm he caused and not for the expense of replacing any materials or structures.
In a brief to the appellate court, Schindler stated that it was highly improbable that precisely 250 tons of hay were burned in the arson. There is no supporting documentation for any of the figures stated in this unsworn document.
In order to determine the true extent of the loss, he will request that the 9th Circuit set aside the compensation sum and direct a U.S. District Court judge to conduct a new restitution hearing.
The restitution ought to remain in place, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Suzanne Miles, the criminal appellate chief at the Oregon U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In a brief submitted to the appellate court, Miles retorted that the prosecutors had requested a larger sum, $122,497.60, based on an itemized statement of losses created by a BLM field manager in April 2007.
According to the BLM statement, $25,000 will be used to replace 250 tons of hay that were destroyed in the fire at a cost of $100 per ton; $2,099 will be used to repair fences that were cut; $3,155 will be used to fix permanent fences; and $92,243 will be used to build a hay storage pole barn. Two of Dibee’s co-defendants had previously been ordered by the court to pay the entire $122,497.60.
According to Miles, the BLM had to rebuild the hay storage barn, replace any damaged hay, and fix the fences right away to prevent more dangers to the unleashed horses and injuries to drivers at a nearby roadway. Although the error was corrected, the government acknowledged that the BLM had double-counted some of the repairs.
Due to ambiguity surrounding the barn’s hay inventory and the fact that Dibee had already paid $40,000 to the victim in a previous Oregon arson case, U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane reduced the amount of restitution by $40,000 in November 2023.
However, McShane also pointed out at the restitution hearing that the fact that Mr. Dibee did leave the country for more than a decade is partly to blame for the fact that these figures were challenged well after the fact.
Two decades ago, Dibee was charged with a series of attacks that caused harm to environmental targets around the West. Thirteen Animal Liberation Front members were found guilty of charges pertaining to the group’s arson campaign in the early 2000s and given prison sentences that ranged from slightly more than three years to thirteen years.
After hearing about possible charges in 2005, Dibee left the nation, first to Syria and then, in the fall of 2010, to Russia. He remained there until 2018, when Cuban officials detained him when he was returning to Russia from a vacation to South America. In August 2018, the FBI moved him to Portland from Havana.
Dibee entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit the BLM arson in California in 2001, as well as conspiracy to commit arson and arson in an Oregon fire he assisted in starting at the Cavel West Inc. meatpacking factory in Redmond in July 1997, and was sentenced to time served on Nov. 1, 2022. Prior to his sentencing, he had been in custody for two years and five months. Over the course of three years, he was mandated to perform 1,000 hours of community service.
According to Dibee’s attorney, Dibee should only be held accountable for the damage he caused to the BLM horse corral’s fence. According to Schindler, Dibee did not go with the others to burn the barn.
Miles retorted that Dibee had entered a guilty plea to knowing and willfully plotting with his other defendants to willfully destroy and cause malicious damage to BLM property using explosives and fire. She claimed that McShane rejected the same reasoning in 2023.
The 9th Circuit will hear arguments in Dibee’s appeal on February 5 at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse.
— Maxine Bernstein writes about criminal justice and federal courts. You may contact her at [email protected], 503-221-8212, or follow her on LinkedIn or X@maxoregonian.
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