Pre-Trial Continues for Priests Who Denounce Torture
By Sari Gelzer
T r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 13 August 2007
Two Roman Catholic priests, who were arrested as they approached the Fort Huachuca
gatehouse on November 19, 2006, will face a continuance of their pre-trial hearing
this August 13 in Federal Court in Tucson, Arizona. The intent of Franciscan
Fr. Louis Vitale, 74, and Jesuit Fr. Steve Kelly, 58, was to speak with enlisted
personnel and deliver a letter denouncing torture to Major General Barbara Fast,
commander at the post.
The letter addressed to Major General Fast voices the priests' concern with
what is being taught to interrogators who are being trained at Fort Huachuca,
the headquarters for the intelligence services of the US military.
"The Army Field Manual on interrogation (Human Resource Exploitation Training
Manual) was written at Fort Huachuca," wrote Bill Quigley,
law professor and human rights lawyer at Loyola University New Orleans.
Quigley, who also happens to be representing both priests in this case, goes
on to say: "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."
Before becoming the Commander of the US Army intelligence Center in Arizona,
Major General Fast was the top US intelligence officer in Iraq. She was responsible
for reviewing the status of detainees at Abu Ghraib before their release, and
was serving her post during the period in which practices of torture by US military
personnel were occurring in the prison.
The priests found it fitting to discuss US acts of Torture with Major General
Fast and ask her what is specifically being taught to US military interrogators
at the US base. In their letter, they address Major General Fast:
"We are here today as concerned US 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."
The priests were at the base in Sierra Vista, Arizona as part of a demonstration
of over 120 people that gathered on Sunday, November 19, 2006, to protest military
training that fosters torture. Frs. Vitale and Kelly were stopped as they approached
the military gates. When they were not allowed to go inside to speak with the
service men and women being trained, the two men knelt in prayer and were arrested.
The demonstration at Fort Huachuca was held in conjunction with the 16th annual
vigil at Fort Benning, Georgia, organized by the group, School of the Americas
Watch. On Saturday, November 18, 2006, over 20,000 protesters arrived at Fort
Benning to call for the closing of what was formerly known as the School of
the Americas. The school's name was changed in 2000 to the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
A Congressional task force found that soldiers, responsible for the massacre
of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador
in 1989, were trained at the School of the Americas, which moved to Fort Benning
from Panama in 1984. The protesters accuse the school of participating in mass
human rights abuses in Latin American and beyond.
Fr. Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly face federal and state charges of trespass and
refusal to follow police orders.
Fr. Vitale is co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based organization
that has opposed nuclear weapons testing for a quarter of a century. He was
arrested at a Fort Benning Protest in 2005 and served six months in federal
prison.
Fr. Kelley has served time in federal prison for the nonviolent, direct disarmament
of nuclear weapon delivery systems. In December of 2005, he served as chaplain
for Witness to Torture, a delegation of US anti-torture activists who peacefully
marched in Cuba to the gates of the Guantanamo Bay naval base and prison camp.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story