Pace e Bene

Not in Our Name:
Fr. Louie’s Third Letter from Jail

By Fr. Louie Vitale, OFM

I write from Imperial County Jail in El Centro, California, where I am serving five months as a federal prisoner, as is my codefendant Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ at a federal prison in Taft, California.  We were arrested for trespass at the US Army Intelligence Center and School at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, where US interrogators are trained in the use of “enhanced interrogation methods,” considered by most of the rest of the world to be “torture.”

We were motivated by an awareness that General Barbara Fast, who had been commander of interrogation at Abu Ghraib during the time of the international exposure of shocking pictures of dehumanization of Iraqi prisoners by US personnel.  She was then assigned as commander at Ft. Huachuca where these interrogators arte trained.

We went asking for an interview with her and with some trainees to bring light to this shocking program on behalf of the US government that operates “in our name.”

We also were alarmed by hearing that Army Specialist Alyssa Pedersen, from Flagstaff, Arizona — who has been through the program at Ft. Huachuca and sent to a similar prison in Iraq — after just two sessions in the torture cages became suicidal and did in fact take her own life.

Ordering our people to participate in torture also makes them victims!

Through the years I have come to know many torture survivors.  Among these is Dr. Diana Ortiz, brutally tortured in Guatemala.  Her incredibly exposing account – The Blindfold’s Eye – has been a principal part of my reflection while here in prison.  Her 24-hour horrendous ordeal of torture has caused her hundreds of flashbacks and nightmares bringing her to the brink of suicide, and even twelve years later, caused her to insist she still wished they had just killed her.

Many torture survivors agree: “If you shoot me I no longer hurt — the torture never leaves.”

In light of this cruel and inhuman treatment by our own military and those we have supported and entrusted for torture in other countries, we must say “No – not in our name – never again.”

We must close every prison or location in which torture victims are held for “enhanced interrogation.”

We must examine and reverse any legislation or policy –- including White House memos that violate the Geneva convention against torture and say “no to torture.”

In fact, since it is so integral to war, we need to say no to all war.  From torture of an individual in a cell or pit to all out nuclear holocaust it is a seamless garment of horror, terror, and inhumanity.  We must not cease our protest.

No to torture.  No to weapons of mass destruction.  No to war.  Never again.  Not in our name.

— Fr. Louie Vitale

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