OPENING arguments began on Monday in the criminal trial of seven US peace activists who, on April 4, 2018, breached security and were arrested on the Kings Bay Trident Submarine Base in Georgia.

The base is home to six US Trident submarines and also periodically services the British fleet of four Vanguard-class Trident submarines.

As proceedings began and a jury was selected, the defendants sat patiently beneath a portrait of Sir Thomas More, looking down on them from the mahogany-coloured walls of a federal courtroom in Brunswick, Georgia.