London (dpa) - British animal rights activists are mounting a multi-pronged assault on a company that tests pharmaceutical products on animals, using a mix of legal protest and illegal terror that has investors abandoning the company and its staff terrified.

The tactics range from a peaceful picket outside the laboratory of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire, through putting pressure on the company's bank, to assault on company staff.

On Monday Science Minister Lord Sainsbury warned that pharmaceutical companies would move their research out of Britain if the protestors succeeded in their aim of closing down the company, a drugs tester that works for some of the world's biggest drugs firms.

Protestors organized in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) are targeting the bank whose financing keeps the laboratory going, as well as a large supermarket chain that is a client of the same bank in an attempt to close off all avenues of finance.

Two days before Christmas last year two men wearing balaclavas attacked a company manager, spraying ammonia in his eyes and pushing him to the ground in front of his wife and children as he returned from work.

They went on to smash windows at his home and kick in the front door.

Staff have been subjected to death threats, and 11 have had their cars firebombed. Others have been woken in the night by the telephone to hear whispered threats and yet others have received hate mail that targets their families. A letter bomb caused light injury to a six-year-old girl.

One employee, a female scientist aged 57, described how her car was torched last May outside her bedroom window. "I can still see that car on fire and at times I dream that I am in it," she said.

After suffering panic attacks, she changed her mobile-phone number to head off the threatening calls, but they began again after her tormentors got her new number and sent her a text message that read: "We got you, you old slag."

The senior police office in Cambridgeshire has warned that the increasingly violent protests could result in death.

Chief Constable Ben Gunn highlighted the "increasingly bitter" tone emanating from the protestors: "It is only a matter of time before somebody is killed ... It is having a bad effect on my officers' morale. Some have not had a weekend off for months."

HLS managing director Brian Cass has called on the government to criminalize organizations like SHAC and criticised the authorities for inaction.

"Very little has happened. There have been lots of good words which have been very comforting but we have not actually seen any action ... The government should be looking at the criminalisation of organisations like SHAC, which have been formed purely to cause the demise of perfectly legitimate companies like ours," Gunn said.

He has received backing sections of the press. The Daily Telegraph, which supports the opposition Conservative Party, said: "There seems to be no enthusiasm for tracking down the terrorists. If the political will were there, they would be no match for the security services ... it would be a bleak day indeed if the views of a few fanatics were allowed to prevail over the rule of law."

The company's bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, has come under pressure from both sides and is refusing to say whether it will roll over HLS' 23 million pound (34 million dollar) loan which falls due within days.

A spokesman confirmed that three directors had been targeted by protestors last week, but SHAC believes supermarket chain Tesco holds the key.

"That's the bank's Achilles' heel; Tesco has a strict policy on animal testing. Their customers won't like it when we tell them their banker is propping up a company that kills 500 animals in experiments every day," SHAC's Gerg Avery says.

Sainsbury called on the bank to make a purely commercial decision on the loan, saying the majority of Britons accepted that experiments were necessary to test the safety of life-saving medicines.

"If HLS was shut down that would mean it was more difficult for medical research to take place in this country ... We have very strong laws about the safety of drugs and that means that experiments do have to take place," he said.

SHAC remains confident, as a statement this week indicates: "If anyone is reading this and considering baling out HLS, be warned. We are prepared for a long fight, and while our goal is HLS, we will take on anyone who gets in our way."

The tactics have proved highly effective. In 1990 HLS shares traded at 3.50 pounds. Currently they are worth around three pence.

On Tuesday Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said animal rights activists should not be able to force legitimate research companies out of business.

"There is a very big difference between lawful protest, which we support, and intimidation, thuggery and violence which we don't," he said, but there was no pledge to invoke the considerable powers British law and order forces have access to.

Avery was unyielding. "Today (Tuesday) there have been about 25 demonstrations at the Royal Bank of Scotland's corporate's centres," he said, pledging the protests would continue.

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