Someone has dug up her grave and taken her body.

Unimaginable? Sadly, not for the relatives of Gladys Hammond. Her remains were unearthed from the churchyard of St Peter's in the little English village of Yoxall, in Staffordshire, in October 2004.

This week, the four ghouls responsible were jailed for their part in that grisly act, as well as for plenty of others nearly as shocking over a six-year campaign to intimidate the Halls and their employees at the family business. Gladys was the mother-in-law to one of the Halls.

Things got worse after the body was taken. Because the Hall family stood firm in the face of this barbarism, they eventually found life-long friends and neighbours shunning them, for fear that they too would be targeted.

Taunts were sent to the family in letters, offering to return the body if the family shut down its business.

And what did the Hall family do for a living? Were they Bosnian-Serb camp guards?

Satan-worshipping child pornographer cannibals?

Something, surely, to justify fire bombings, midnight assaults, threats, intimidation and grave robbing?

The Hall family raised guinea pigs. Past tense . . .

because the family decided last August that they couldn't go on. In hopes of getting Gladys's body back, they gave in. The farm ceased breeding guinea pigs in January. Her body was not returned.

What were the guinea pigs for? John Ablewhite, 36, and three accomplices discovered that the Hall family was supplying guinea pigs to Huntingdon Life Sciences.

That company uses a variety of means to perform trials of life-saving pharmaceuticals and gene therapies . . . including animal testing. Is it cruel to test drugs on animals?

Well, I'm not about to volunteer my dog. But then again, if it was a question of sacrificing my dog to save my sonf for most normal people, that is a no-brainer.

For the many diseases for which there is no cure, treatments require research.

That means a certain amount of tests on animals.

This is the ethical point at which the crazies and the rest of us part company. The crazies, no matter what lifesaving or life-enhancing benefits may accrue, believe that testing a drug on a guinea pig is on an ethical par with the Holocaust.

So they pursue their campaign with a mystical fury and commit horrors that only those who believe themselves to be truly righteous could stomach.

No different, psychologically, from crucifixwielding thugs who intimidate women going to get an abortion.

Different merely in degree, rather than kind, from people who bomb subways and tall buildings.

Huntingdon was back in the news last week when campaigners threatened the shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline, for which Huntingdon does work. A letter sent to each shareholder warned them to sell their shares or their personal details (perhaps, though not specified, including the location of the graves of their deceased loved ones) would be posted on the internet.

Huntingdon has already been chased across the Atlantic, moving its headquarters to the US. Even there, the company wasn't safe. It was to list on the New York Stock Exchange, but the NYSE delayed the listing.

The company accuses the exchange of caving in to intimidation from campaigners. A website, NYSEhostage. com, warns that if the global champion of fairness in capital markets can be intimidated in this case, others will follow.

Whether it's bringing lifesaving drugs to the sick or bringing essential natural gas ashore through Rossport to keep the Irish economy going, there will always be a few who will demand, with incandescent rage, that their own personal views become the effective law of the land.

British police said they hope the prison sentences for the four zealots who dug up Gladys Hammond's grave will be a warning to others.

Don't bet on it. The Halls only this week got their grandmother back, after one of the conspirators (who got a lighter sentence) told police the location of the body. But in every other respect, the extremists won.

Unless the rest of us decide to stand against intimidation and threats of violence, we can expect more such cases.