ANIMAL rights activists targeting Oxford University are taking their campaign to America, where extremists were last week convicted of inciting terrorism.

Protesters will single out clubs and restaurants hosting reunion events arranged by the Oxford Alumni Association of New York. It is the first time that Speak, a group opposed to the construction of a £20 million research facility at the university, has taken its protest abroad.

Pro-Test, a group in favour of animal testing, could also take its message across the Atlantic. The organisation, founded by Laurie Pycroft, a 16-year-old schoolboy from Swindon, to show support for the Oxford laboratory, has been invited to speak in the US. He said: “We’d love to become an international organisation in the future. We may branch out into America, where this kind of debate is already going on.”

Pro-Test has the support of Professor Stephen Hawking, who lectured in Oxford last week. He said: “It is ridiculous for a nation that is happy to eat animals to object to life-saving work on animals. I applaud those who have the courage to stand up to the extremists.” Pro-Test has been invited to appear before a House of Commons Select Committee.

Last week the American branch of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac), which aims to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire, was convicted, along with six of its members, of inciting violence and harassment against the staff and families of HLS and their clients. Now Speak is mobilising support in the US. On its website, it encourages activists to contact venues in New York to persuade them to cancel bookings for alumni dinners next month. It says: “Let’s not forget: the reason these events take place is in order to raise money for the university. Some of this money will then undoubtedly find its way to those who are torturing and abusing animals.”

A Speak spokesman said: “We’re pretty confident our friends in New York will come to our assistance. There will be a number of people at various venues, educating them about exactly what goes on in vivisection laboratories.”

Work on the Oxford laboratory was suspended for 16 months after the previous contractors pulled out after threats from extremists. It resumed in December last year, amid high security. Speak has since adopted new tactics, including targeting groups with only tenuous connections to the university.

Shac is still operating in America. A posting on its British website boasts about the harassment of Bank of America executives at their homes in New York. Of one, it said: “His doormen were so happy . . . they called the police and cowered inside trying to protect the door from protesters. Chants rang out letting everyone know how his company funds people who use puppies as punching bags and mail their removed bloody hearts to their girlfriends for Valentine ’s Day.”

Several people have been charged in Britain under “economic sabotage” laws introduced last summer. Police said that it was too early to say whether the “new momentum” had resulted in increased activities abroad.

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