Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly began serving five months in prison on October 17, 2007 for nonviolent action taken at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. US military personnel are taught torture techniques at the bases’s intelligence school. On November 18, Retired Catholic lay leader Betsy Lamb, Franciscan Fr. Jerry Zawada, and Mary Burton Riseley were arrested at Ft. Huachuca. Lamb and Zawada were denied bail during a court hearing held in Tucson on December 6 and are being held pending trial. Here is Fr. Louie’s second letter to the community:
"Torture on Trial”:
One Year Later
by Louie Vitale
Each year a growing number gather at Fort Benning, GA to memorialize the ‘martyrs’ that have been massacred at the hands of very repressive regimes in Latin America. As we looked at the massacres we were aware of the “enhanced” cruel and excruciating torture that accompanied these deaths. As a greater focus grew on the School of the Americas which graduated many of Latin America’s military officers, we discovered there were manuals issued in Spanish used at the school to teach methods of torture. These manuals were prepared at the U.S. Army intelligence school at Fort Huachuca in Southern Arizona.
As the scandal of toture spreaad not just to our Latin American trainees but our own soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, we became aware that our overzealous desire to engage in the “War on Terror” was stirring our own military and intelligence forces to use the same tactics used elsewhere in what has become known as “enhanced interrogation.” The parameters of these are spelled out in a series of memos whose approval evolves from the highest government echelons (even accredited to presidential wartime powers). These circumvent even the Geneva Conventions, a treaty which the U.S. Is a co-signer. They also violated our own codes of treatment for enemies and prisoners of war.
Steve Kelly, S.J. and I became aware in October, 2006 that a growing number of people, inspired by participation with Schools of the Americas Watch, were now gathering at Fort Huachuca to raise attention to the development and transmission of these cruel “enhancements” of interrogation, whatever the human costs. We became aware that the new commander of Fort Huachuca, General Barbara Fast, had been in command of the interrogations at Abu Ghraib and of the atrocities now so familiar to any T.V. Watcher. So we went November 19, 2006, with a plan ot visit and interrogate Gen. Fast on the training there.
We were made aware that a young military trainee, Alyssa Paterson, had been trained there. She was sent into the cages twice and committed suicide. The atrocities heap their anguish on both the tortured and the torturers.
We were not allowed to deliver our letters to Gen. Fast. We attempted to negotiate a means of delivery and in desperation knelt and prayed.
We were arrested that day and released, charged with Federal trespass. Then transpired a year of court appearances in Tucson, AZ. We had a faithful group of supporters.
It soon became clear that the government did not intend on airing this shocking behavior carried out in the prisons of Cuba, Iraq and even in “renditions” to the “axis of evil” (eg. Syria).
Our exceptionally well prepared lawyer, Bill Quigley, offered to the court several highly reputable, and graphic, studies, such as the one prepared by Gen Taguba for the army, one by the U.S. Red Cross, one by the A.C.L.U., and others across the board. At the government’s request, Judge Hector Estrada disallowed any of this unchallengable data to bring out the awful truth.
Steve and I did not engage in this pursuit to try to free ourselves from the penalties of trespass – we felt an urgent mandate on behalf of the community of humankind to raise the visibility of this inhumane behavior being carried out in our name, and causing such suffering to so many and creating untold scandal to the world community. Gen Taguba revealed to us that he did not release the worst of the pictures as he did not believe people could take it. He did tell us that “history would honor our actions.”
No, we could not bring this testimony to the judgment of a jury of the American people, but it did get an airing and one year later we are gratified that these efforts and the witnesses such as that given by Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (T.A.S.S.C), founded by torture survivor Diana Ortiz.
An entirely new awareness is present among informed people not just in our country but in the world.
Evidence of this can be seen in the recent hearing to confirm Attorney General Mukasey. The tenor of questions moved beyond the politics of the candidate to the moral judgment of the man who holds us accountable for such human injustices and atrocities. Even one of those engaged in the development of “enhanced interrogation” came forward to say “waterboarding” is not “simulated drowning.” “I was the recipient of this excruciating treatment and it is drowning! Mr. Mukasey has still to convince himself of such evidence but we believe the new awareness exhibited during the exhaustiveness of these hearings will hold government offices and indeed ourselves to recall the “military commissions act of 2006” and restore habeas corpus and the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions and the internationally agreed upon courses of human behavior.
Steve and I are serving our time. Three hundred people gathered at Fort Huachuca November 18 and three more were arrested and will be again raising these questions in the courtroom. Yes – we must agree torture is always evil and is being put on trial in the U.S. And we are saying “No, never again. Not in our name!”
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