THREE animal rights extremists are facing 12 years’ jail after admitting taking part in a campaign of terror against the owners of a guinea-pig farm that culminated in the exhumation of the body of an 82-year-old woman.

The men had denied plotting to harass the owners of Darley Oaks Farm, in Newchurch, Staffordshire, but changed their plea yesterday during a hearing at Nottingham Crown Court.

Their trial had been due to start in a fortnight but they will now be sentenced next month. Josephine Mayo, 38, of Birmingham, appears today to enter a plea on the same charge.

Jon Ablewhite, 36, from Manchester, Kerry Whitburn, 36, from Birmingham, and John Smith, 39, from Wolverhampton, were remanded in custody.

They admitted conspiring to blackmail the owners of the farm between September 1999 and September last year. They have previous convictions for animal rights attacks and have been in custody since they were charged in September.

The Hall family, their friends, neighbours and suppliers, were threatened, attacked and their homes and cars vandalised.

The family were accused of being paedophiles and banned from their local pub and golf course. They closed their farm in December after the exhumation and removal from the village churchyard of the remains, still missing, of Gladys Hammond, the mother-in-law of Chris Hall.

Announcing the closure, they issued a statement saying: “We hope that, as a result of this announcement, those responsible for removing Gladys’s body will return her so she can lie once again in her rightful resting place.

“The business has continued during a sustained protest from animal rights extremists for six years, which included the desecration of her grave. We are planning a return to traditional farming.”

Staffordshire Police set up a unit of 20 detectives and spent more than £2.5 million protecting the farm from protesters.

One hundred officers searched nearby woodland for the corpse and the grave desecration investigation alone has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Smith — formerly known as Hughes — drove a car into the window of a butcher’s shop in 1991 and went on the run after being granted bail. He was arrested in 2001 in connection with an attack on Brian Cass, the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Britain’s largest animal research laboratory.

Whitburn was convicted in September 2003 of attacking a dairy worker. He had previously been charged with public order offences after protesting at the homes of directors of companies connected to HLS.

Ablewhite, who taught at schools in the Wolverhampton area, used the name John Holmes to found Save Newchurch Guinea Pigs.

He was jailed for nine months in 2001 for attacking the home of Leonard Cass, Brian Cass’s brother.

• Animal rights activists targeting Oxford University could be banned from the city under an injunction sought at the High Court yesterday.

  Lawyers for the university want to tighten an earlier court order allowing weekly four-hour protests outside a laboratory site.

  A video of activists letting off sirens and banging drums was shown to the court. The university claims that the noise is causing alarm, harassment and distress. It wants to extend an exclusion zone and reduce the length and size of the protests.

  Charles Flint, QC, for the university, said that it was “facing a serious organised campaign of intimidation” and a “barrage of noise”.

  The hearing continues.

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