By Max Taves

A judge handed UCLA a big victory over its animal-rights tormentors in Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday. The judge’s order won’t be made public until sometime today, but here are the two most immediate effects:

1) The personal information of UCLA researchers and administrators who were listed as “targets” on Web sites of animal-rights extremist groups—UCLA Primate Freedom Project, the Animal Liberation Brigade and the Animal Liberation Front—must be taken off those sites.

2) Five animal rights protesters are now subject to a temporary restraining order that bans them from coming within 50 feet of UCLA researchers’ homes during the day, and within 150 feet at night. The ban applies to Linda Faith Greene, Hillary Roney, Kevin Olliff, Ramin Saber, and Tim Rusmisel. Notably, only these five were restricted, not all the protesters UCLA was pushing for.

John Hueston, lawyer for the UC Regents, says researchers like Arthur Rosenbaum (an incendiary device was placed under his car by radicals but it failed to ignite) and Edythe London (her house was bombed with a Molotov cocktail device) can now sleep without overnight protesters screaming through bullhorns: “Burn this motherfucker down!”—apparently one of the group's favorite chants.

Animal rights radical Jerry Vlasak, a one-time doctor who falsely testified to the U.S. Congress that he is a practicing physician at Loma Linda University medical center, and who acts as spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, predicts “absolutely” more violence against UCLA researchers who use animals. Vlasak has used his claim that he is a “practicing” medical doctor to gain national press. The Weekly has thus far been unable to locate any Southern California hospitals where Vlasak is actually practicing.

Now Vlasak warns that the court's temporary restraining order is going to push the radicals off the streets and into illegal, violent “underground” activities. “There are hundreds more standing by to do business as usual,” Vlasak told the Weekly. “As far as aspects of the 'campaign' go, it’s not going to make any difference whatsoever.”

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