TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - Though she has been an active advocate for the environment, Briana Waters insists she would never condone arson as a means to a political end.

"It's very dangerous to human lives," she testified Wednesday in federal court. "I've always been someone who feels very strongly about not hurting people in any way."

The 32-year-old violin teacher is accused of serving as a lookout while her friends planted a devastating fire bomb at the University of Washington in 2001.

The fire is one of the most notorious in a string of arsons that investigators say were perpetrated from the mid-1990s to 2001 by members of the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely organized collection of radical environmentalists.

Waters was one of five people indicted in the arson at the university. She faces a minimum of 35 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy, possessing an unregistered destructive device, arson and use of a destructive device during a crime of violence.

No one was hurt in the arson at UW, but its Center for Urban Horticulture was destroyed and rebuilt at a cost of $7 million. It was targeted because the ELF activists mistakenly believed researchers there were genetically engineering poplar trees, investigators said.

Waters told jurors she had no part in the crime.

Prosecutor Mark Bartlett took issue with Waters' assertion that she would never consider arson as a way to make political statements.

Bartlett pointed to a 1998 New York Times Magazine article about radical environmentalists which quotes Waters, then a senior at The Evergreen State College, as saying she "totally" supported arson "as long as people don't get hurt." Tiffany Tudder, a fellow student at the time, testified that she remembered Waters making that statement.

Waters testified she could not remember whether she said it or not, but added that she would be surprised if she did, because she has always opposed politically motivated arsons.

Prosecutors are using phone records to show Waters was in contact with at least some of the other defendants around the time of the fire.

One defendant, Lacey Phillabaum, who has pleaded guilty in the case, told federal investigators that Waters had obtained a rental car from a relative for use in the arson, prosecutors said.

Records from a Budget Rental Car in Olympia show that Waters' cousin had rented a vehicle the weekend of the university fire, prosecutors said. Soon after, a $200 cash deposit appeared in the cousin's bank account - the only cash deposit he made all year. The money came from Waters to reimburse him for the rental car's cost, prosecutors argue.

Waters' lawyers, Neil Fox and Robert Bloom, accuse prosecutors of threatening draconian sentences to persuade those charged in the UW fire and other arsons to plead guilty or testify falsely.

Bloom said prosecutors are pinning their case on the testimony of Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar, who are expected to receive more lenient sentences in exchange for their cooperation. Waters claimed on the witness stand that the two are trying to frame her: Phillabaum because she had a relationship with Waters' boyfriend at the time, and Kolar because Waters spurned her sexual advances.

The former boyfriend, Justin Solondz, is a fugitive in the case. William "Avalon" Rodgers, who also was indicted, committed suicide in jail.

Waters' defense attorneys rested their case Wednesday. Closing arguments are expected by the end of the week.