'BP just wants me to go away'
Capitol Hill police officers escort Code Pink co-founder Diane Wilson out of a congressional hearing in Washington, June 17, 2010.
A leader of a US anti-war group, who was arrested for interrupting two congressional hearings on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, says BP just wants her to go away.
Diane Wilson, who is one of the co-founders of Code Pink: Women for Peace, made the remarks in a telephone interview with Press TV on Saturday.
On June 17, Wilson interrupted testimony by BP CEO Tony Hayward before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce before she was eventually subdued and forced out by Capitol Police.
Wilson was protesting against the decision to lift the liability cap on energy giant BP.
Hayward had just started his opening statement when Wilson, with oil smeared on her hands and face, disrupted the hearing. "You need to be charged with a crime," she shouted.
Wilson had also been arrested at a Senate hearing the previous week when she protested Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's blocking of a bill that would have lifted BP's liability cap and now faces up to three years in prison.
"The liability cap would be 75 million (dollars) when they make 90 million a day… so I was just so outraged… I stood up and disrupted them," the Texas shrimper told Press TV.
"They do not want any disruption in those Senate hearings… this is 'we the people'… this is the worst environmental disaster we've ever had in this country," she said, referring to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"It was flagrant, there were violations, there were environmental violations, there were agencies with no oversight, there were politicians who have their hand in the oil budget."
Despite the enormity of the crisis and the damage done, they only allowed five members of the public to attend the "huge" Senate hearing, she added.
Wilson said the authorities told her she faced two charges of unlawful conduct for disrupting the hearings and one for resisting arrest and could receive a three-year prison sentence.
She stated that she went to court but it appears that BP only wants her to go away.
They are trying to say that everything is over, the whole oil spill is gone, they are putting the fisherman back to work and there is no problem, she added.
On April 22, the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank following a massive explosion that killed 11 workers and allowed 4.9 million barrels of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico in the biggest maritime oil spill disaster of all time.
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