BANGOR – Six anti-war activists got their wish Tuesday when a district court judge sentenced them to 24 hours in the Penobscot County Jail rather than ordering them to pay a $200 fine as prosecutors originally recommended.

Judge David B. Griffiths also ordered the six to reimburse the county $80, the maximum allowed by law, toward the more than $90 per day cost of housing them at the jail.

The jailed protesters, along with five others, were arrested in September at U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe’s Bangor office. Four of the 11 agreed to pay the $200 fine, while one woman served her 24-hour jail sentence in December.

“We chose to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, who felt civil disobedience was necessary when elected representatives fail to act to stop extreme injustice,” Douglas Allen, 65, of Orono told the court. “We are willing to face the consequences of our action with the hope that others will take whatever steps they can to put an end to the occupation of Iraq and bring our troops home safely.”

Allen and the others were arrested on Sept. 21 and charged with criminal trespass for refusing to leave Snowe’s third-floor offices and hallway at One Cumberland Place when asked to do so by the building’s owner and the police.

Previously, some judges have given protesters the option of paying fines or performing community service. District Court Judge Robert Murray last month rejected that option for the group arrested in September, so they pleaded not guilty.

On Tuesday, the date set for their trials, six of the protesters told Griffiths they would rather go to jail than pay the fine. Griffiths is a semiretired judge from Presque Isle who occasionally hears cases in district courts around the state. He sentenced the six after all of the defendants pleaded no contest to criminal trespass, a Class E misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000.

Others who chose jail over paying the fine were: Jeanne Olivett, 59, Brooklin; Suzanne Fitzgerald, 74, Bar Harbor; Christopher Stark, 52, Winterport; Constance Jenkins, 58, Orono; and Ilze Petersons, 63, Orono.

Nancy Hill, 53, of Stonington served her sentence in December.

Those who paid the fine were: Ron Greenberg, 58, Bar Harbor; John Miller, 59, Blue Hill; Richard Paget, 63, Stonington; and Daniel Lourie, 69, Bar Harbor.

The addition of six inmates at the Penobscot County Jail brought the population up to 181, Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross said late Tuesday afternoon. When the population reaches 182, inmates must be boarded at other facilities.

He said that because the six only would be in the jail for 24 hours, he did not expect other inmates would be displaced unless an unusually large number of people were arrested overnight.