French farmer loses jail appeal

PARIS, France -- French anti-globalisation farmer Jose Bove will have to serve his three-month jail term for trashing a McDonald's following a ruling by the country's highest court.

The Paris-based Cour de Cassation upheld on Wednesday a 1999 sentence against Bove and his fellow defendants for his assault on the site of a planned new fast-food outlet in the southern French town of Millau.

Bove's last chance to avoid jail, or to serve a lighter term, is the decision of a lesser court which still has to rule on how the sentence will be applied.

He has already served 19 days.

But his lawyer said Bove would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Bove told Reuters news agency after the ruling: "I always considered myself not guilty because we acted out of a position of necessity.

"I'm not afraid of anything, not even prison. ... We shall continue the struggle."

He refused any attempt at a compromise over his imprisonment.

"Either I'm guilty and I go back to prison, or I'm innocent and I shouldn't have been convicted," he was reported by The Associated Press as saying.

Bove had argued his action against McDonald's had been "legal and necessary" in response to punitive U.S. taxes on Roquefort cheese and other European farm goods.

About 200 demonstrators had gathered outside the court house while the sheep farmer was in court to hear the Cour de Cassation ruling.

Bove is also fighting against a separate six-month jail term handed down last December for hacking down genetically modified rice plants in a 1999 raid on a research centre.

A decision on that is not expected before the end of the year.