Protesting Priests Escape Jail Before Torture Trial
Despite calls by federal prosecutors to jail two priests protesting against torture training at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, a federal judge has allowed them to remain free until their trial, which is set for June 4, 2007. Fr. Louis Vitale, a 74 year old Franciscan priest, and Fr. Steve Kelly, a 58 year old Jesuit priest, were arraigned in federal court in Tucson on federal and state charges of trespass and refusal to follow police orders at an anti-torture protest at Ft. Huachuca.
The federal prosecutor asked the judge to put the two priests in jail before their trial saying they had a substantial history of arrests and were likely to be involved in similar protests and commit other protest crimes unless jailed. After the prosecutor admitted that the actions charged were nonviolent, the court released the priests on their own recognizance.
The priests were arrested on November 19, 2006 at Ft. Huachuca, in Sierra Vista Arizona after the knelt to pray on the road approaching the gate to the fort. They were part of a crowd of 120 people peacefully protesting against military intelligence training at Ft. Huachuca that fosters torture. The protestors objected to the teaching of torture interrogation tactics at Ft. Huachuca by U.S. military intelligence - tactics used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Documents detailing Department of Defense spying on protestors outside the Fort in 2004 have been made public. The DOD described the protest as a “credible threat” to national security.
The Army Field Manual on interrogation (Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual) was written at Fort Huachuca. A number of the officers and soldiers responsible for human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison have worked at or were trained at the Headquarters for Army Intelligence Training at Ft. Huachuca.
The two priests tried to speak to enlisted soldiers and deliver a letter to Major General Barbara Fast, commissioner of the post, denouncing torture and the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
General Fast is the highest ranking intelligence officer tied to the torture at Abu Ghraib. Two other soldiers with ties to Fort Huachuca are among the 28 implicated in the beating deaths of two prisoners in Afghanistan in 2002.
Counter-protestors waved flags and accused those protesting against torture of being supporters of Islamic terrorists.
Fr. Vitale is a member of Pace e Bene, whose mission is “to develop the spirituality and practice of active nonviolence as a way of living and being and as a process for cultural transformation.” Fr. Vitale is also a co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based organization that has opposed nuclear weapons testing for a quarter of a century. He recently served six months in jail following his arrest at the Ft. Benning vigil in November, 2005, and was ejected from congressional hearings in September after speaking out against the Military Commissions Act.
Fr. Steve Kelly is a member of the Redwood City Catholic Worker community and has served time in federal prison for the nonviolent direct disarmament of nuclear weapon delivery systems. In December, 2005, Kelly served as chaplain for Witness to Torture, a delegation of over two dozen U.S. anti-torture activists who defied the U.S. embargo of Cuba with a peaceful march through that nation to the gates of the Guantanamo Bay naval base and prison camp.
The text of the letter the priests tried to deliver to the base commander reads:
To: Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast -
We are here today as concerned U.S. people, veterans and clergy, to speak with enlisted personnel about the illegality and immorality of torture according to international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions.
We condemn torture as a dehumanization of both prisoners and interrogators, resulting in humiliation, disability and even death. In addition to the hundreds of detainees who have died, we are also concerned about U.S. military personnel. Alyssa Peterson committed suicide after participating in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Lynndie England and others have been imprisoned for their illegal activities.
We are here today at Ft. Huachuca in solidarity with tens of thousands of people at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Ft. Benning, Georgia (formerly known as the School of the Americas) to say that the training of torturers must immediately stop. Nothing justifies the inhumane treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters. Torture by U.S. military personnel has reached alarming proportions and has horrified people around the world.
We are convinced that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is unconstitutional. We totally reject its conclusions. Torture is a useless and unreliable tool that leads to an accepted practice of terrorization and the rationalization of wrongdoing.
We are here today to repent and clearly state that because of our sense of moral and human decency we condemn torture. NOT IN OUR NAME. 19th day of November, 2006 - Louis Vitale,OFM / Steve Kelly, SJ
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Bill Quigley is a law professor and human rights lawyer at Loyola University New Orleans and represents one of the protesting priests. You can find out more about the protest and the jailed priests on the website for Jonah House http://www.jonahhouse.org/ For other information about the protest and the priests, contact Jack or Felice Cohen-Joppa 520-323-8697. You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu
“The Army Field Manual on interrogation (Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual)…”
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How clinical and vague a title for a manual on torture. Anyone who doubts Orwell’s concept of newspeak as contained in his novel 1984 needs to read that title again.
“The two priests tried to speak to enlisted soldiers and deliver a letter to Major General Barbara Fast, commissioner of the post, denouncing torture and the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
General Fast is the highest ranking intelligence officer tied to the torture at Abu Ghraib. Two other soldiers with ties to Fort Huachuca are among the 28 implicated in the beating deaths of two prisoners in Afghanistan in 2002.
Another one to add to the list of “must deliver to the International Tribunal at the Hague” list.
Who would ever have guessed that in this country objections to torture would be subversive?
one recognizes the full prescience of a mind like shakespeare’s when this type of event occurs in the modern world. William said, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” and how true of a nation that countenances unspeakable violence, but punishes the voices of conscience that hold up the TRUE light and teachings of our spiritual masters of diverse faiths. Let us remember, given the FACT (Downing St. Memo, etc) that a case was FIXED for this war, that the whole thing IS a fabrication; how then is “truth” extracted from so-called “terrorist prisoners”? The whole thing is such a dark charade. On a related basis, when the rightwing Christian theocratic judges of the south want “The Ten Commandments” hung in their court room, don’t they see any psychotic irony to the fact they are fist to demand capital punishment? Or the “Right to Life” fundamentalits, Bush’s “base,” who see nothing wrong with slaughtering upwards of half a million innocents in a cold, callous, calculated war of choice? IF the masters are watching, they must be wondering what their efforts had been given for.
If these protesters go to jail, will they be classified as political prisoners or enemy combatants? What about the grandmothers that get jail time almost every year for demonstrating at the School of the Americas? This stuff has been going on for years. But in light of all the other evil stuff that Schrub has done, I can now recognize the crimes of our government for what they are. These are all crimes against humanity.
I like Poet’s suggestion. T
I didn’t get to finish - my keyboard locked up! Now my computer is doing very strange things even though I rebooted. I wonder if had anything to do with typing in “enemy combatants”. hummm…..
Anyway, off to the Hague. Then, Off With Their Heads!!!! Off with their heads, said the Queen…..
Just a few basic facts about torute and the laws pertaining to it and a definition.
U.N. Convention identifies four reasons for torture, namely: (1) to obtain a confession; (2) to obtain information; (3) to punish; (4) to coerce the sufferer or others to act in certain ways. Certainly, these are all possible purposes of torture. Although coercian doesn’t neccessality meet the definition of torture.
Torture is: (a) the intentional infliction of extreme physical suffering on some non-consenting, defenceless person; (b) the intentional, substantial curtailment of the exercise of the person’s autonomy (achieved by means of (a)); (c) in general, undertaken for the purpose of breaking the victim’s will. Note that breaking a person’s will is short of entirely destroying or subsuming their autonomy.
Moreover, there are numerous examples of long term damage to individual autonomy and identity caused by torture, to some extent irrespective of whether the victim’s will was broken. As we have seen, torture proper targets autonomy itself, and seeks to overwhelm the capacity of the victims to exercise rational control over their decisions — at least in relation to certain matters for a limited period of time — by literally terrorising them into submission. Hence there is a close affinity between terrorism and torture. Indeed, arguably torture is a terrorist tactic. In terms of the above definition of torture there are at least two things that are manifestly morally wrong with torture. Firstly, torture consists in part in the intentional infliction of severe physical suffering — typically, severe pain; that is, torture hurts very badly. For this reason alone, torture is an evil thing. At any rate, the point to be made here is that torture is a terrorist tactic, and for a liberal democracy to legalise and institutionalise it, i.e. weave the practice of torture into the very fabric of liberal democratic institutions, would be both an inherent contradiction — torture being an extreme assault on individual autonomy — and, given what we know about the practice of torture in military, police, and correctional institutions, highly damaging to those liberal democratic institutions. It would be equivalent to a liberal democracy legalising and institutionalising slavery on the grounds, say, of economic necessity.
I could go on about torture and the many different possible exceptions. What catches my attention the most is that toture is a terrorist act. We are supposed to be fighting torture – not practicing terrorism. And finally, for any liberal democracy to legalize torture is a contradiction. Dick Cheney is a very evil man indeed, as is the Attorney General and our President. As for John McCain caving in to pressure from Cheney over last year’s laws concerning torture, all I can say is shame on you and I hope you remember all the others who died under torture while you yourself were there. In fact, it leads me to believe that perhaps you never were tortured, because if you truly were, how could any man permit such laws to be passed in the USA?
His whole country’s government sickens me
It isn’t often that we hear about Roman Catholic priests being arrested for committing acts of civil disobedience, especial for political reasons.
Both the Jesuits and the Franciscan have a rich history of nonviolence. I was inspired by the “antics” of the Catonsville 9 when I was in college. Daniel Berrigan, S.J. and his brother Philip, S.S.J. brought me to the position that I should become a conscientious objector.
It is unfortunate for the world that Constantine co opted the church and synthesized it into a mythological type of religion. Jesus was teaching nonviolence and if he hadn’t allowed himself to be caught, tortured and killed, his teaching would have been hollow. Even if he was God, and had the ability to use supernatural strength to fight back or protect himself, his followers would have no reason to believe that he expected his followers to follow his examples.
Jesus was tortured because the Roman Cohorts were given the freedom to brutalize people so that the Roman citizens and captives would stay in line out of fear.
Jesus was always about truth and nonviolence. Christianity needs a new reformation based on the nonviolent teachings of Jesus. If Christianity is to survive and mean something then the teachings of Jesus must be decoupled from national policies.