France's highest court upheld a three-month jail term today for Mr Jose Bove, hero of the international anti-globalisation movement, over his ransacking of a McDonald's restaurant to protest US trade barriers.
The Cour de Cassation ruling means the sheep farmer has exhausted all means of appeal in national courts against his conviction for the 1999 assault on the site of a planned new fastfood outlet in the southern French town of Millau.
Judges rejected his argument that the attack he led with a group of other activists was legal and necessary civic resistance in response to punitive US taxes on Roquefort cheese and other European farm goods.
Reacting to the ruling from Millau, where he and 200 supporters had gathered on the steps of the local courthouse, Mr Bove said he was not surprised.
"I always considered myself guilty because we acted out of a position of necessity," he told reporters.
"I'm not afraid of anything, not even prison...We shall continue the struggle," he added.
Separately, his lawyer told reporters in Paris he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Supporters of Mr Bove, for many French a symbol of their proud food and farming traditions, slammed the decision, saying he was being made an example of before French national elections in three months where law and order is a major issue.
"We sense a political will to suppress anti-establishment movements. It would help many politicians to see him in jail during the election campaign," Mr Bernard Moser of Bove's Confederation Paysanne movement said outside the Paris court.
Mr Bove, who has already served 19 days of the sentence, may well get some partial reprieve because a lower court must still decide how the sentence is applied. One possibility could be a spell in open prison.
Some supporters have suggested that Mr Bove's popularity among some sections of French voters might yet play in his favour, paving the way for leniency.