Father Melo Father Melo, a Jesuit priest and radio host, condemned the SOA graduate-led military coup against the democratically elected Honduran government in 2009 from the start. As a result, his radio station was occupied by the military following the coup and he began receiving death threats. The killing in Honduras continues. Just last Sunday, three rural laborers were killed amid an ongoing conflict over land in the Bajo Aguán region on Honduras’ Caribbean coast.
Adriana Portillo-Bartow Adriana is a life-long advocate for human rights and a survivor of the war in Guatemala. After Guatemalan security forces killed one of her brothers and disappeared six members of her family, among them her father, her 10 and 9 year old daughters, and her 18-month old sister, Adriana and her two surviving daughters fled their native country and arrived in the US in 1985.
Father Roy Bourgeois, M.M.Father Roy has been a priest for 38 years. He founded SOA Watch in 1990 after witnessing the killings of thousands in Central America in the 1980′s. Father Roy’s conscious awakening and calling to priesthood happened immediately after his experience serving in Vietnam. He has spent four years in prison for nonviolent protests against the SOA.Theresa Cusimano and Ed Kinane, former SOA Watch Prisoners of Conscience 300 SOA Watch activists have been sentenced to prison and probation for nonviolent resistance actions to expose the horrors of the SOA and to express solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Latin America.
Ann Wright is a former United States Army colonel and retired official of the U.S. State Department, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She is most noted for having been one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
, a community-based worker organization whose members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout Florida.
Brother Domingo Solis is a Franciscan friar and currently the director of the Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC) in El Salvador. JPIC is an organization of Franciscans whose mission is to care for the poor and marginalized, advocate for human rights, be peacemakers and respect and care for all of creation. In El Salvador, JPIC is an active member of the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining (the Mesa) and has supported the struggle for a complete ban on all metallic mining in the country. As part of the Mesa, Brother Domingo has helped organize protests of thousands of people demanding stricter domestic environmental regulations, has educated parishes and communities around the dangers of mining, and has demanded the respect for the human rights of environmental activists.
, our champion in Congress, is going to introduce legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to suspend operations at the SOA/ WHINSEC and to investigate the links between U.S. foreign military training and human rights abuses in Latin America.
Yolanda Oquelí Yolanda Oquelí is an anti-mining activist, community leader, and human rights defender in Guatemala. She has been at the forefront of a nonviolent resistance to mining operations in the farming communities of San Jose del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc. On June 30th she survived an assassination attempt, and to this day carries a bullet lodged near her spine.
Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlan (MEChA) MEChA is a student organization that promotes higher education, cultura, and historia. MEChA was founded on the principles of self-determination for the liberation of our people. We believe that political involvement and education is the avenue for change in our society.
Francia Marquez is a leader from the Afro-Colombian gold-mining community of La Toma in southwestern Colombia. Home to 1,052 families, La Toma was founded by runaway slaves in 1636, and since then the community has struggled against political, economic and armed forces looking to control their lands and resources. Francia makes up part of this struggle. Through her work as a community leader and as part of Procesos de Comunidades Negras (PCN), she has striven to protect La Toma’s ancestral lands from plunder, violence and dispossession, despite being identified as military target by paramilitary groups and receiving death threats that seek to drive her off this land.
Son del Centro Son del Centro is a group of companeros and camaradas who are students, musicians, activists, dancers, friends and organizers from various parts of Santa Ana, California. The group was formed to create a space for youth to explore their traditions, creativity and consciousness, through son jarocho music.
Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP passed a national resolution in 1998, calling for the closure of the SOA.
emma’s revolution is the duo of award-winning activist musicians, Pat Humphries & Sandy O. Called “Inspiring, gusty and rockin’”, the duo is celebrating the release of their third cd, “Revolutions Per Minute”, an electrifying soundscape of “rousing and soulful” songs of social conscience, in settings from intimate acoustic to full-on funk.
who has brought a law suit to the Costa Rican government, challenging the decision of President Arias of authorizing military training for Costa Rican civilian police to study at the School of the Americas (WHINSEC); the case is pending at the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. Previously, he challenged president Pacheco’s decision of supporting the US-UK led aggression on Iraq.
Martin Almada Martin Almada is a Paraguayan educator who was imprisoned under the regime of Alfredo Stroessner. His wife died of a heart attack after being forced to hear through a telephone her husband’s cries as he was tortured. After a campaign by Amnesty International, Almada was released. He later uncovered the Terror Archives, a set of file describing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, under Operation Condor.
Rebel Diaz Rebel Diaz is a political hip hop duo out of the Bronx, New York and Chicago, IL consisting of the Chilean brothers Rodrigo Venegas (known as RodStarz) and Gonzalo Venegas (known as G1). Rebel Diaz uses their music as an organizing tool and to spread knowledge about injustice.
Belen AscenciónBelen was the youngest of 55 family members of victims of Mexico’s drug war on the Mexican Caravan for Peace and Justice. The caravan brought these courageous voices to over 30 US cities this summer, sharing the tragic consequences of a drug war that starts in the US, and that must also be stopped from the US. Belen’s brother disappeared while driving from Mexico to the border, while conversing on his cell phone with his mother in Los Angeles. On the last visit of the Caravan to Washington, Belen shared: “Fear is the oldest weapon that has been used by government to control you, but when someone is taken from you who you didn’t realize meant so much to you, your consciousness is elevated. …We don’t want you to feel sorry for us, …You, who are looking from the other side, I was once there. I hope that you join us.”Juan Carlos Trujillo Herrera and Rafael Trujillo Herrera Juan Carlos and Rafael are survivors of the U.S. sponsored and SOA fueled “Drug War” in Mexico.
Elise is a singer who was born in Switzerland, raised in North Carolina and since 1977 has made her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Colleen performs progressive folk rock colored w/ south of the border beats and socio-enviro-fem conscious compositions.
Xochitl Espinosa, National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) The National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) seeks to improve the quality of life for Latinos and Latino immigrants in their communities both in the United States and in countries of origin. NALACC seeks to build transnational leadership capacity and increase immigrant civic participation, so that immigrants can advocate effectively for public policies that address the root causes of migration, as well as addressing the challenges faced by immigrants in the United States. NALACC aspires to become an entity recognized for its ability to articulate the challenges faced by transnational immigrant communities, as well as viable solutions to those challenges.
Politicians sanctimoniously condemn war crime while prolonging the war
 Barely scratching the surface of war crimes in Afghanistan.
 The people of Afghanistan have endured over ten years of death and destruction at the hands of the U.S. military.
|
The graphic video going viral of U.S. Marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan—a war crime under international law—is forcing people in the United States to face the reality of the war.
The video is emblematic of what the U.S. military has been doing to the people of Afghanistan for over ten years.
As combat veterans and active-duty members of the U.S. military, we feel we should weigh in…
1.Urinating is wrong, but bullets are okay? Yes, the video is “shocking” to most. But the politicians, talking heads and media outlets who call it “shocking” and “deplorable” will not use those same words to describe the war itself.
It would be laughable, if not so tragic, that the Pentagon strongly denounced the video, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says he “condemns it in the strongest possible terms.” Panetta and the Pentagon officials then left the press conference to continue overseeing the destruction of Afghanistan. Any lip service from Washington or its apologists, from where the mass murder in Afghanistan is being orchestrated, is a complete joke.
There is so much apparent concern over the sanctity of life after these Afghan men were killed. But they should never have been killed in first place. They were only lying dead on the ground because the U.S. government used the 9/11 attacks—in which the people of Afghanistan played no role—as a pretext to launch a full scale invasion to conquer a resource-rich, independent country that they had been trying to dominate for years. This is a war that all polls show is opposed by the U.S. public, U.S. troops and the people of Afghanistan.
2. There is no such thing as “good conduct” in an immoral war. The dehumanization in the video isn’t shocking to those of us who have seen the reality of the wars wages by the U.S. government. But the reactions to the video from most beg the question: what did people think was going on over there? Passing out candy and building schools?
The video is a dose of reality. Its content reveals less than a minute of the war—just one minute in what has been going on for over ten years. Imagine how many such incidents will never be known. And not just acts of desecration, but the acts that are accepted as necessary by the generals and politicians: dropping missiles on houses from robots in the sky, artillery barrages on villages, torture at Bagram Airbase, shooting “suspected insurgents” for carrying a shovel or pushing a wheelbarrow.
This is a colonial-type war, a war for empire, a war for resources and profits. The war itself is a crime. With that foundation, it is only inevitable that even more war crimes will grow out of a criminal war.
3. The inhumanity goes back decades. U.S. involvement in Afghanistan—the second poorest country on the planet— goes back far beyond the bombing and invasion in 2001. And it has never been for humanitarian reasons. Throughout the 70’s, during Afghanistan’s brief progressive period, the CIA pumped billions of dollars to sponsor right-wing militias. These elements attacked women’s schools, slaughtered hundreds of teachers initiating major literacy programs, and carried out a reign of terror on those in Afghanistan deemed “enemies” of the so-called “national interests” of the U.S. government. As Afghanistan was trying to lift itself from feudalism, the will of the people was crushed by the CIA and its Mujahadeen partners.
Those reactionary political groups funded and armed by the CIA continued to receive that support as they committed further atrocities, and as they became the Taliban, who we are now told we must fight and die endlessly to defeat. The Taliban leadership received funding from the CIA up until September 11, 2001. During this phase, the political character of Afghanistan’s government meant nothing to the U.S. government—what mattered to them was the possibility of a business deal that would allow massive oil pipelines through the country. But negotiations were not going as planned for Wall Street, so the 9/11 attacks provided a pretext for the classic tactic used to straighten out nations who will not open up their markets for plunder: all-out military force.
For over ten years, the people of Afghanistan have lived under a brutal occupation. In just the first month of the war, more civilians were killed by U.S. bombs than died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. But the blood had just started flowing. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians are dead at the hands of the U.S. military. Tens of thousands are orphaned, widowed, maimed and homeless. Civilian deaths in Afghanistan are now the highest they have been compared to every other year of the war.
The people of Afghanistan have endured more than a decade of bombings, night raids, torture, a corrupt puppet government and a foreign occupation of more than 100,000 troops and mercenaries from the world’s biggest and most destructive military machine. The U.S. occupation has been a complete catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan, which is why they overwhelmingly want us out. Even Afghans who strongly oppose the Taliban site the U.S. occupation as the main cause of the country’s problems and violence.
4. Afghanistan has the right to resist occupation. The people of Afghanistan who are now suffering under the weight of the U.S. military machine played no role whatsoever in the 9/11 attacks. In fact, when young Afghan men were polled in Kandahar and Helmand province—the location where the video of the Marines was film—it was found that over 90 percent of them had never even heard of the World Trade Center or the 9/11 attacks. The majority of those polled believe the U.S. military is in Afghanistan simply for “violence and destruction.”
The media unquestioningly report that the Marines urinated on dead “Taliban insurgents.” Yet, there are no weapons laid-out next to the bodies, which have been searched, as is standard practice—only a wheelbarrow, in a country almost entirely dependent on an agricultural economy. The claim that these men died after attacking U.S. forces is accepted as fact. This is a bizarre assertion, considering all the other ongoing scandals in Afghanistan involving U.S. forces killing innocent civilians—from the “Kill Team,” to the notorious night raids that every Afghan fears, to Apache helicopters cutting down children one-by-one. Such racist atrocities flow from the Pentagon’s racist, Islamophobic propaganda that dehumanizes the people targeted by the U.S. war machine—the lie that if Afghans are killed, they must have deserved it—which has become the dominant narrative.
But, if these men were in fact killed during a firefight with the Marines, does that justify their deaths? Whose home is Afghanistan, that of the dead men or the Marines? Whose country has been bombed, invaded, and occupied for over ten years? Do the victims of illegal foreign aggression not have the right to resist?
As troops who have been to war and seen the reality, we understand why people living under occupation take up arms to kick us out. We know that we would be doing the same thing if we were in their position. In fact, our experiences have shown us that that we actually have more in common with them than with the millionaire politicians and Pentagon generals telling us to fight. Whoever the dead men are, they are not the “bad guys.” They are the victims of a criminal war of aggression.
5. End the war now! There is no kinder, gentler war in Afghanistan. This video is just a small glimpse of its ugly face. The video has revealed to millions of people in the United States what their tax dollars are paying for. At a time when 40 million people in the United States are out of work, when millions are being cut from heating assistance, social programs, food assistance—when tuition is skyrocketing, layoffs increasing, budgets being gutted—the U.S. government is pouring our tax dollars into a war that 2/3 of the population is against.
This is an endless war, a war the politicians and generals acknowledge they cannot win. They agree that the U.S. presence there will last “the rest of our lives, and the rest of our children’s lives.” This is a war for profits, for a tiny clique of Wall Street CEOs, defense contractors and shareholders. The type of conduct in this video will be repeated over and over; our friends and loved ones will die and be maimed endlessly; our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan will suffer endlessly.
The Pentagon brass have vowed to find the culprits shown in the video and punish them severely. And they should be. But they do not condemn the culture of racist propaganda that promotes and fosters such war crimes, nor will they end the war which allows the killing to continue, with or without the desecration of corpses. The leaders at the top, from whom this behavior consciously flows, should be punished as well.
The video should be a clarion call to all people to demand an immediate, complete withdrawal of all US/NATO forces from Afghanistan. And this little glimpse into the inhumanity unleashed on the people of Afghanistan shows that we not only need to end the war immediately, but pay heavy reparations to the victims of this criminal war.
6. Troops have the right to refuse their orders. The war in Afghanistan is a war for the 1%. In Wall Street’s relentless pursuit of new raw materials and new sources of profits, they have literally thrown away the lives of us and our friends, and unleashed untold suffering on an entire population. The people of Afghanistan are not our enemies; but those millionaires and billionaires, who keep the war raging endlessly, are.
We have a right to not be used as cannon fodder in Wall Street’s attempt to conquer new markets. We have a right to not be party to an occupation that constitutes a great crime against humanity.
Everyday, more and more active-duty troops are excercising their right to refuse to take part in the unpopular, immoral war in Afghanistan. If you’re interested in doing the same, click here for information and support.
Ron Kennedy, general manager of the Scottsdale gun club, says the business got the idea for the photo op last year when a club member happened to come in dressed as Santa and other members wanted their picture taken while they were holding their guns.
How the US Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists May 15, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in War, Criminal Justice, Peace, Democracy, Civil Liberties, Nuclear weapons/power.Tags: anti-nuclear, anti-war, Criminal Justice, dissent, doj, eric holder, fran quigley, greg boertje-obed, megan rice, michael walli, non violence, nuclear, nuclear weapons, oak ridge, pacifism, peace, peace protestors, ramsey clark, roger hollander, swords into plowshares
2 comments
Roger’s note: if this doesn’t send a chill up the spine of anyone with spine enough to peacefully challenge US war mongering, then I don’t know what will. This case is Lewis Carroll, Orwell and Kafka rolled up into one. Don’t fail to realize that this is happening under a president who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
From left, Greg Boertje-Obed, Sister Megan Rice, and Michael Walli. (Photo: Saul Young/News Sentinel)
In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.
Here is how it happened.
In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property. Y-12, called the Fort Knox of the nuclear weapons industry, stores hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and works on every single one of the thousands of nuclear weapons maintained by the U.S.
“The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist. For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”
- Sr. Megan Rice
Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles, written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Sr. Megan Rice has been a Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for over sixty years. Greg Boertje-Obed, a married carpenter who has a college age daughter, is an Army veteran and lives at a Catholic Worker house in Duluth Minnesota. Michael Walli, a two-term Vietnam veteran turned peacemaker, lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC.
In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs stating “No Trespassing.” The signs indicate that unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
No security arrived to confront them.
So the three climbed up a hill through heavy brush, crossed a road, and kept going until they saw the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) surrounded by three fences, lit up by blazing lights.
Still no security.
So they cut through the three fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the HEUMF. Still no security arrived. They began praying and sang songs like “Down by the Riverside” and “Peace is Flowing Like a River.”
When security finally arrived at about 4:30 am, the three surrendered peacefully, were arrested, and jailed.
The next Monday July 30, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were arraigned and charged with federal trespassing, a misdemeanor charge which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail. Frank Munger, an award-winning journalist with the Knoxville News Sentinel, was the first to publicly wonder, “If unarmed protesters dressed in dark clothing could reach the plant’s core during the cover of dark, it raised questions about the plant’s security against more menacing intruders.”
On Wednesday August 1, all nuclear operations at Y-12 were ordered to be put on hold in order for the plant to focus on security. The “security stand-down” was ordered by security contractor in charge of Y-12, B&W Y-12 (a joint venture of the Babcock and Wilcox Company and Bechtel National Inc.) and supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
On Thursday August 2, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli appeared in court for a pretrial bail hearing. The government asked that all three be detained. One prosecutor called them a potential “danger to the community” and asked that all three be kept in jail until their trial. The US Magistrate allowed them to be released.
Sr. Megan Rice walked out of the jail and promptly admitted to gathered media that the three had indeed gone onto the property and taken action in protest of nuclear weapons. “But we had to — we were doing it because we had to reveal the truth of the criminality which is there, that’s our obligation,” Rice said. She also challenged the entire nuclear weapons industry: “We have the power, and the love, and the strength and the courage to end it and transform the whole project, for which has been expended more than 7.2 trillion dollars,” she said. “The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist. For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”
Then the government began increasing the charges against the anti-nuclear peace protestors.
The day after the Magistrate ordered the release of Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli, a Department of Energy (DOE) agent swore out a federal criminal complaint against the three for damage to federal property, a felony punishable by zero to five years in prison, under 18 US Code Section 1363.
The DOE agent admitted the three carried a letter which stated, “We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war. Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social structure based on war-making and empire-building.”
Now, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were facing one misdemeanor and one felony and up to six years in prison.
But the government did not stop there. The next week, the charges were enlarged yet again.
On Tuesday August 7, the U.S. expanded the charges against the peace activists to three counts. The first was the original charge of damage to Y-12 in violation of 18 US Code 1363, punishable by up to five years in prison. The second was an additional damage to federal property in excess of $1000 in violation of 18 US Code 1361, punishable by up to ten years in prison. The third was a trespassing charge, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison under 42 US Code 2278.
Now they faced up to sixteen years in prison. And the actions of the protestors started to receive national and international attention.
On August 10, 2012, the New York Times ran a picture of Sr. Megan Rice on page one under the headline “The Nun Who Broke into the Nuclear Sanctum.” Citing nuclear experts, the paper of record called their actions “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.”
At the end of August 2012, the Inspector General of the Department of Energy issued at comprehensive report on the security breakdown at Y-12. Calling the peace activists trespassers, the report indicated that the three were able to get as far as they did because of “multiple system failures on several levels.” The cited failures included cameras broken for six months, ineptitude in responding to alarms, communication problems, and many other failures of the contractors and the federal monitors. The report concluded that “Ironically, the Y-12 breach may have been an important “wake-up” call regarding the need to correct security issues at the site.”
On October 4, 2012, the defendants announced that they had been advised that, unless they pled guilty to at least one felony and the misdemeanor trespass charge, the U.S. would also charge them with sabotage against the U.S. government, a much more serious charge. Over 3000 people signed a petition to U.S. Attorney General Holder asking him not to charge them with sabotage.
But on December 4, 2012, the U.S. filed a new indictment of the protestors. Count one was the promised new charge of sabotage. Defendants were charged with intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison. Counts two and three were the previous felony property damage charges, with potential prison terms of up to fifteen more years in prison.
Gone entirely was the original misdemeanor charge of trespass. Now Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli faced up to thirty-five years in prison.
In a mere five months, government charges transformed them from misdemeanor trespassers to multiple felony saboteurs.
The government also successfully moved to strip the three from presenting any defenses or testimony about the harmful effects of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Attorney’s office filed a document they called “Motion to Preclude Defendants from Introducing Evidence in Support of Certain Justification Defenses.” In this motion, the U.S. asked the court to bar the peace protestors from being allowed to put on any evidence regarding the illegality of nuclear weapons, the immorality of nuclear weapons, international law, or religious, moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, the Nuremberg principles developed after WWII, First Amendment protections, necessity or US policy regarding nuclear weapons.
Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli argued against the motion. But, despite powerful testimony by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a declaration from an internationally renowned physician and others, the Court ruled against defendants.
Meanwhile, Congress was looking into the security breach, and media attention to the trial grew with a remarkable story in the Washington Post, with CNN coverage and AP and Reuters joining in.
The trial was held in Knoxville in early May 2012. The three peace activists were convicted on all counts. Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli all took the stand, admitted what they had done, and explained why they did it. The federal manager of Y-12 said the protestors had damaged the credibility of the site in the U.S. and globally and even claimed that their acts had an impact on nuclear deterrence.
As soon as the jury was dismissed, the government moved to jail the protestors because they had been convicted of “crimes of violence.” The government argued that cutting the fences and spray-painting slogans was property damage such as to constitute crimes of violence so the law obligated their incarceration pending sentencing.
The defense pointed out that Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli had remained free since their arrest without incident. The government attorneys argued that two of the protestors had violated their bail by going to a congressional hearing about the Y-12 security problems, an act that had been approved by their parole officers.
The three were immediately jailed. In its decision affirming their incarceration pending their sentencing, the court ruled that both the sabotage and the damage to property convictions were defined by Congress as federal crimes of terrorism. Since the charges carry potential sentences of ten years or more, the Court ruled there was a strong presumption in favor of incarceration which was not outweighed by any unique circumstances that warranted their release pending sentencing.
These non-violent peace activists now sit in jail as federal prisoners, awaiting their sentencing on September 23, 2012.
In ten months, an 82 year old nun and two pacifists had been successfully transformed by the U.S. government from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism.
Quigley is an Indianapolis attorney working on local and international poverty issues. His column appears in The Indianapolis Star every other Monday.