André Fürst, owner of Chanvre-Info. is in prison

Meanwhile, his hemp fields are harvested by criminals.

Read ANDRÉ FÜRSTs letter to ENCOD

On Saturday 27 October, André started a hungerstrike to protest against the fact that his preventive detention (of 49 days) was still continuing, while the judge had ordered to end this detention on Friday 26 October.

According to Swiss legal regulations, he would have been allowed to spend some days in freedom to arrange some practical things at home and in his company, before entering his 29 months sentence in another prison, where he will have more facilities.

The prosecutor opposed this decision. Until Wednesday October 31st, when the decision was taken to transfer André to the prison centre where he will fulfill his 29 months jail sentence.

Andre can receive visitors each weekend. Please contact the prison to fill out the forms to request a visit.

You can also write to André at:

For several months, Chanvre-Info. with the permission of the authorities has cultivated a hemp field in Murten, Switzerland. The hemp was to be used for the production of seeds, hemp schnapps and essential oil, all three being strictly legal products.

On Sunday 9 September, without warning the police sequestered the storage hall, blocked the access to the field and later arrested owner André Fürst.

On Sunday 16 September, around 1 o’clock in the morning, a gang of about a dozen individuals in balaclavas, armed with guns, lead bars, and
baseball bats, aimed to antagonize and immobilise the two watchmen of the hemp field, as well as managing to steal an indeterminate amount of hemp.

After risking being kidnapped or worse, the watchmen successfully
persuaded the attackers to leave them to stay in the same place, and
finally alerted the rest of the farm.

The police arrived 10 minutes after the call for help. The policemen took the watchmen to the police station and kept them for 4 hours, whilst no patrol stayed to protect the field and the rest of the people at the farm, including three women, against an eventual new attack.

This situation lasted until Wednesday 19 September, when the police finally erradicated the field and sealed Chanvre-Info’s buildings.

Ironically, the legal owner of the hemp field who was planning to use the hemp for legal purposes, remains in prison to fulfilll a prison sentence of 29 months. Meanwhile, the Swiss police has allowed criminals to harvest the hemp field with obviously quite different intentions.

We call upon all of you to send a letter to the Swiss authorities to ask the revision of the sentence to André Fürst.

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