Animal rights activists vandalised a charity shop because it had links with an animal testing laboratory, a jury has heard.

Supporters of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) group sprayed abusive slogans across the British Heart Foundation’s charity shop in Gravesend, Kent on February 21 last year, Winchester Crown Court was told.

The jury, in the trial of five alleged SHAC activists charged with conspiracy to blackmail, were shown pictures of the words “scum” and “BHF torture animals” written across the windows in red spray paint.

Heather Nicholson, of Pond Croft in Yateley, Gerrah Selby, formerly of Aldershot Road, Church Crookham, Daniel Wadham, formerly of Pond Croft, Yateley, Gavin Medd-Hall, from Croydon, and Trevor Holmes, from Crawley, West Sussex, deny conspiring between November 15, 2001 and May 2, 2007, to blackmail those companies they believed to be associates of HLS.

Earlier in the trial the court was told that SHAC’s sole aim is to shut down HLS.

They target secondary and tertiary companies who have links with HLS and blackmail them into severing all ties with them, the prosecution claims.

SHAC supporters would carry out “direct action” on the firms, usually under the badge Animal Liberation Front (ALF) or Animal Rights Malitia, until they released a “capitulation statement” saying they would stop working with HLS, the jury was told.

Prosecutor Michael Bowes QC told the court the attack on the British Foundation was later reported on the animal rights website www.directaction.info.

He said the group “used unwarranted demands and menaces” to get the companies to sever ties with HLS.

The trial continues.