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- Mary's Pre-sentencing Statement
- Joint Statement with Betsy Lamb and Fr. Jerry Zawada Nov. 18, 2007
Fr. Louis Vitale
I got involved at Ft. Benning on the issue of torture particularly involving Central America. We were all shocked into reality with Abu Ghraib. It's not just "them" that torture (with a little aid from some U.S. "ne'er do wells") but we might be major instigators. SOAWatch discovered that Ft. Huachuca was the source of the torture manuals used at the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, as well as being the major center for interrogators and other intelligence operations (mostly covert).
As November, 2006 approached and I thought again about going to Ft. Benning for the annual action, Retired Col. Ann Wright mentioned her visit to the Tucson area and the concern about Ft. Huachuca, including the solidarity action there on the same day as the Ft. Benning demonstration. I got very interested in this, even more as I heard more. I myself had no knowledge of the place before Ann spoke to me about it. It also seemed a good alternative to going to Georgia (was I just tired of Georgia jails?). As I found out more I got more excited about it and felt a greater urgency.
Jesuit fellow activist Steve Kelly and I made the trip to attend the demonstration and deliver a letter to Col. Barbara Fast. It was very stimulating and actually seemed like a friendly encounter, although that was just on the surface.
When we went back for a February 13 hearing we began to see the darker side (the basement of the Greeley Hall building) and became more aware of the sinister mission of the place--only explicated for us by the military prosecutor at our April 3 arraignment, when he asked the magistrate for pre-trial detention for Steve and me. We are becoming more aware of how central the mission of Ft. Huachuca is to the Domination System's apparatus for world control and for intimidation of those who might thwart our political/economic purposes both here and abroad (witness Guantanamo). Our effort may just be the first steps in exploring what is happening at Ft. Huachuca, but the larger picture continues to emerge. I feel an ever greater commitment to do what we can to stop what is happening at Ft. Huachuca and wherever we encounter this force of domination and suffering.
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Statement of the Franciscan Friars, Province of Saint Barbara
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Regarding the sentencing of Father Louis Vitale, OFM
Father Louis Vitale, OFM, is a member of the Province of Saint Barbara (western U.S.) of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscan Friars).
Striving to be a true follower of Saint Francis of Assisi throughout his 48 years as a Franciscan friar, Father Louie has been dedicated to peace, justice and the well-being of creation. In a world that suffers from violence and war, Father Louie has often engaged in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to promote these causes.
Father Louie's nonviolent actions are motivated by the deep spiritual conviction that peace, justice and mercy are mandates of Christ, and such actions have a long and respected history in Christianity and many other religious traditions.
On November 19, 2006, Father Louie was among others protesting military "interrogation training" at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. This was in conjunction with a larger protest at Fort Benning, Georgia, calling for the closure of the school there that has supported Latin American military regimes that committed heinous violence against their own citizens.
It is our understanding that Father Louie was arrested at Fort Huachuca when he attempted to speak with enlisted personnel and deliver a letter to the commander denouncing the immoral teaching of torture there, and that he has now been sentenced for a total term of five months.
Father Louie's religious superior, Father Melvin Jurisich, OFM, Provincial Minister of the Province of Saint Barbara, commented on the sentencing: "Father Louie's Franciscan brothers fully support his actions at Fort Huachuca because we know they are consistent with his life-long dedication to work for good and oppose evil. He does so in the spirit of prayer and nonviolence. He is doing what he believes Saint Francis of Assisi would do if he were at Fort Huachuca. We stand by Father Louie during his time of incarceration, and we know that even in jail he will continue to work and pray for peace."
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Fr. Stephen Kelly
After my walk with the Catholic Worker "Witness Against Torture" in Cuba at Guantanamo in December 2005, I feel compelled to raise consciousness and expose how the U.S. practices torture. It's been going on a long time. Both the tortured and the U.S. soldiers are victims. We are motivated to speak out against the horror of torture, and the fact that our young soldiers are being turned into torturers.
A recent survey said that the majority of U.S. Catholics think torture is acceptable. I find that reprehensible. What a scandal. As a priest, I say torture is counter to the Gospel of Jesus. I don't think Christians should be doing this. We need to renounce torture, war and nuclear weapons. We have to learn to love as Christ loved, and abolish torture and war once and for all. So we go to trial as people accused of breaking the law, but we feel we are raising consciousness and trying to put Fort Huachuca and torture on the map. --From an article by Fr. John Dear
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Letter of Provincial, California Province, Society of Jesus
October 24, 2007
Dear Jesuits and Partners in Ministry,
On Wednesday, October 17, Fathers Stephen Kelly, S.J., and Louis Vitale, O.F.M., were sentenced to five months in federal prison for their participation in a nonviolent act of civil disobedience at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, for which they were arrested on November 19, 2006. At the time of their arrest, Louie and Steve were trying to deliver a letter denouncing certain methods of "interrogation training" sanctioned by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to then-commander Major General Barbara Fast. (The link to their letter can be found on the Province website: www.jesuitscalifornia.org.)
Steve is a member of the Murray Residence Jesuit Community in Oakland, and for many years his main apostolic work has been engaging with and educating others regarding peace, nuclear non-proliferation, and nonviolence with the Pacific Life Community and members of the Catholic Worker Movement. Louie is a member of the Santa Barbara Province of the Franciscans and has devoted his whole life to working for peace. (A statement from the Franciscan Friars can be found on their website: www.franciscan.org/JPIC/take_action.asp.)
Guided by the Gospel mandate of peace and nonviolence, as well as the Ignatian commitment to a faith that does justice, Steve is no stranger to being imprisoned for speaking and acting out against institutions and mechanisms of violence. Steve's prophetic witness against nuclear proliferation and war-making speaks a Christ-like love for peace--a voice all too often drowned out and actively suppressed by the cultural and political powers that support violence and war. His incarceration provides a powerful point of reference for contemplating the truth of Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer's famous line: "Thou shall not be a victim. Thou shall not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shall not be a bystander."
Steve's act of nonviolent civil disobedience at Ft. Huachuca last year was a way to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the deaths of the Salvadoran Jesuits and the two women who worked with them, and coincided with the Annual Ignatian Family Teach-In, vigil and peaceful demonstration at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Represented by human rights attorney Bill Quigley, Steve and Louie stipulated to the court that they would refuse to comply with any sentence that included supervision, a fine, or compulsory community service and pleaded no contest to one federal count of trespass (USC 18-1382) and one Arizona state count of "Failure to Comply with Police Officer" (ARS 28-622). They have been sentenced to three months in prison for the federal conviction, plus two months for the state conviction, to be served consecutively.
Steve and Louie have asked that every woman and man of conscience do all they can to protest the injustice of torture and to end U.S. policy that sanctions torture. Respect Life Month and Ignatian Family Teach-In
The powerful witness given by Steve and Louie is an appropriate context for my annual message to the Province on the Church's observance of Respect Life Month and the Ignatian Family Teach-In in Columbus, Georgia. Since 1972, the U.S. Bishops have invited us to pray and act for a renewed sense of the sacredness of every human being from conception to natural death. Each year, the Church focuses on a full range of critical life issues of our times. Steve and Louie provide us with a concrete witness for life in rejecting the torture of human beings. I invite the Province to reflect on this witness as we continue to shape our response to the call of Christ as servants of Christ's mission in the Church and the world. (Additional resources for Respect Life Month can be found at www.usccb.org and www.jesuit.org.)
This prophetic witness is also an opportunity to invite you to the annual gathering that commemorates the lives of the six Jesuits and their two lay women co-workers who were assassinated on November 16, 1989, at the Jesuit University of Central America in San Salvador, El Salvador. This gathering will take place at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, from November 16 to 18.
The highlight of this commemoration is the Ignatian Family Teach-In on Friday and Saturday in conjunction with the peaceful demonstration and procession to support the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA) in Ft. Benning. A program of this school trained the soldiers responsible for the murder of thousands of people in El Salvador and other countries, including our beloved Jesuits and their co-workers. There is a peaceful protest also scheduled at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, on the same weekend. Both of these are opportunities to speak out against tortuous interrogation techniques. (Additional information and resources can be found at: http://www.ignatiansolidarity.net www.ignatiansolidarity.net, www.soaw.org, www.southwestwitness.org, www.tortureontrial.org, and www.torturelaw.org.)
Prayers and Support for Steve Kelly and Louis Vitale
Steve and Louie were taken to a privately-run detention center in Florence, Arizona, the day of their sentencing. If you would like to send them a note of support, please send to:
Stephen Kelly #00816111
CCA
P. O. Box 6300
Florence, AZ 85232
Louis Vitale #25803048
CCA
P.O. Box 6300
Florence, AZ 85232
Note that all books and magazines must be sent by the publisher or directly from a book store.
I will be visiting Steve and Louie while I am in Arizona at the end of this month for my visitation to the Jesuit community and apostolates in Phoenix. I will be sure to bring the prayers, support and encouragement of the Province to them. Their gospel witness is a model and a challenge for us all. We stand by Steve and Louie, knowing that during their time of incarceration, they will continue to work and pray for peace. Conclusion
Over the past two years, we have been shocked and ashamed by reports of torture in U.S. prisons, and so let us recall the words of the U.S. Catholic Bishops in their October 2005 letter: "There can be no compromise on the moral imperative to protect the basic human rights of any individual incarcerated for any reason."
As we all seek to continually grow in our personal and communal call to holiness, generosity, solidarity, and availability in serving God and God's people, let us remember to pray for and encourage one another.
Sincerely in Christ,
John P. McGarry, S.J.
Provincial
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PRAYER TO END TORTURE
By Jill Rauh, of Education for Justice
For recognition of the "special dignity in every human being that comes from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in God's one human family" . . . (Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, June 13, 2006)
God, help us to uphold the dignity of all in our human family.
That all persons, especially those incarcerated indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the world, would be treated according to the "highest ethical standards" . . . (Bishop Thomas Wenski, June 13, 2006) God, help us to uphold the dignity of all in our human family.
For policies which ban the use of torture and which recognize that: "Torture is a dehumanizing and terrible attack against human nature and the respect we owe for each other" . . . (Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, June 13, 2006) God, help us to uphold the dignity of all in our human family.
Help us to take seriously our call as Catholics to uphold the dignity of all people in our human family. Inspire us to urge our leaders to reject torture and mistreatment in all forms. We ask this through Christ, Our Lord, Giver of Life. Amen.
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Betsy Lamb, Mary Burton Riseley, Jerry Zawada, OFMToday we join many who call for an end to our country' s use of torture in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, Afghanistan and in secret prisons elsewhere. We stand near the main gate of Ft. Huachuca, a U.S. Army post in southern Arizona, home base for Army intelligence and where all Army interrogators are trained.
We are here because we can no longer tolerate violations of fundamental human rights such as detention without trial and acts of torture committed in our names behind the vast secrecy which the present administration has instituted. Although Colonel Jeff Jennings and other training staff at the fort seemed sincere in telling some of us that waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions are prohibited at Ft. Huachuca, we continue to believe that these brutal and dehumanizing methods are still happening at the hands of U.S. interrogators deployed abroad.
These acts and the secrecy surrounding them contradict our understanding of the U.S. Constitution and our treaty obligations as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. They are deeply unacceptable to our personal moral consciences.
There has been widespread opposition to our current government's imperial policies of pre-emptive war, unwarranted telephone and Internet-based surveillance, the sending of invasive national security letters, rendition of many times mistakenly suspected foreigners to countries known to practice torture and the selective abolition of civil rights like habeas corpus. We have filled the streets; we have filled the Internet and telephone lines, the op-ed and letters to the editor columns as well as Congressional mail bags. Some of us have refused war taxes. And yet unspeakable, illegal and immoral acts are committed daily in our names as American citizens.
Gates and sentry posts always relate to greed, the desire to hold on to what we have and to keep people less fortunate than we are from claiming their share. It is not true that military people are more greedy than the rest of us, but they have accepted the charge of protecting our abundance with weapons of unprecedented killing power. They are enforcing the projection into the world of our unwillingness to share. We cannot reconcile gates, guns or sentry posts with the Sermon on the Mount.
Gandhi spoke of nonviolent direct action as an experiment in truth or satyagraha. We ask ourselves: how can we best honor our need to withdraw our complicity with our government's actions?
Our simple ritual of approaching the gate of Ft. Huachuca expresses our willingness to undergo suffering rather than to inflict it, and our longing to bring our country to openness and accountability. We seek to meet with enlisted personnel and officers on Ft. Huachuca to continue a dialogue about the interrogation techniques they are learning, how easy it has been for others trained before them to fall into cruelty, and to explore with them what they each might do to prevent themselves from repeating the horrible errors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
We may be arrested. We ask for your prayers, and we ask also that you escalate--in any nonviolent way you are led--your own efforts to end torture and the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Love, peace, joy.
Betsy Lamb
mary burton riseley
Jerry Zawada, OFM
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Betsy LambStatement written by Betsy Lamb from her Florence, Arizona prison cell, read to the people gathered at the Festival of Hope, February 3, 2008
Greetings to all of you gathered in Tucson tonight to put torture on trial.
As my 13 roommates and I sit in our cell this evening, at the Central Arizona Detention Center in Florence, to be counted for probably my 427th time, I will be thinking of you with a smile of thanksgiving, for you and the great support you have been giving to Jerry and Mary and me -- as together we ALL resolve and take action to put torture on trial.
This evening's celebration is called a Festival of Hope...
--We hope that the echo of our witness against torture in the next couple of days will resound throughout our country and world;
--We hope that soon torture will be effectively abolished, nevermore to be experienced by anyone, anywhere, in our world.
Today, many of us find ourselves challenged to find reason for hope. There is reason to feel challenged. I want to quote a paragraph from a November '07 article by Chris Hedges, entitled "America in the time of empire" posted by the Commondreams news center.
Hedges says of our country today, and I quote:
"Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. --They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. --They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. --They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. --They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. --The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence.
"By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it."
You who are gathered at this Festival of Hope are some of those few who confront this lust for power. Through our presence at the courthouse this week, we will be confronting this lust for power.
We are among those who do bring hope to the reality we are living today.
Out of all of us who gather these days to put Torture on Trial, I feel privileged to be one of three to have challenged torture in a special way on the grounds of Fort Huachuca.As you know, my action unexpectedly resulted in an immediate incarceration, which has now lasted two months. It has been a difficult time for me, in part because I'd never had such an overwhelming experience before of the injustice and oppression of the empire's so-called "justice system" or its prison-industrial complex, nor had I ever been so painfully or intimately aware of the existence of what I call a huge "underclass of the incarcerated"; mostly poor, mostly people of color, who regularly revolve in and out of the system.
Incarceration is simply not an effective tool for addressing the malaise that grips our nation. The justice system and the prison industrial complex together represent another whole area for the faithful few to confront.
During my two months here in Florence, I have received more than 250 letters of support. I'd like to quote from one letter writer, a former military chaplain, who now is another one of the "few" ready to confront the powers that be. He brings us back to Ft. Huachuca and the issue of torture. George Kausch of Roseburg, Oregon, says, and I quote:
"My passion is to protest the very unjust administration in our country, including of course its allowing torture and punishing good citizens for merely demonstrating against this effrontery to all humanity... I served my country as a chaplain in Vietnam... I have visited Sierra Vista several times... I have also been on the campus of the Fort, and now it makes sense to me that the secrecy of the Intelligence Center is what I experienced overseas -- no one is supposed to know or could dream of the secrets being hidden."It is these secrets we seek to have uncovered; we want the truth about U.S. involvement with torture to come to light.
In conclusion, I just want to speak briefly to my motivations for being involved in putting torture on trial here. As a person of faith and conscience, I feel I must do what I can, nonviolently, to confront the evils of the empire and make the world a better place for all of us.
In doing so, I try to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who did not try to avoid the wrath of the civil and religious leaders of his day.
There are many issues of concern in today's world. Torture involves a hands-on, person-to-person action that cannot help but harden and prepare its perpetrators for other larger scale evils, that span a continuum all the way to pushing an impersonal button to unleash impersonal nuclear devastation on some faraway land.
I also feel honored to follow in the footsteps of my two long-term friends, Steve Kelly and Louie Vitale.
Finally, in making my decision to take action at Ft. Huachuca, I "conspired" (in accord with a long-respected Jesuit prayer method) with my mentor and model Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred in El Salvador in 1980, for his solidarity with the poor and oppressed.
Each of you at this Festival of Hope tonight has your own reasons for being here. You, too, are a person of faith and/or conscience. You, too, have your role models and mentors. You have particular issues you focus on. You have your own way to discern what actions to engage in. There are many different ways to be one of the few willing to confront evil and bring hope to our world.
I call upon you tonight to follow your own light, in your own way, perhaps with your own community or affinity group.
Many thanks, again, to all of you, for your support for bringing us to the point where we are right now, in bringing torture to trial. Please join me at this time by echoing a resounding, "NO TO TORTURE!"
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Fr. Jerry ZawadaStatement written by Fr. Jerry Zawada from his Florence, Arizona prison cell, read to the people gathered at the Festival of Hope, February 3, 2008
When Betsy Lamb, Mary Burton Riseley and I crawled through or leaped over the orange barricades at Ft. Huachuca on November 18, 2007 I imagined we were viewed by the sentries guarding the entrance as a trio of aging athletes. Or maybe for some as a 2007 version of the Keystone Cops. We certainly did not come across as clandestine conspirators.
It was not any kind of conspiracy in the courtroom sense that prompted us to act, but rather inspiration and a keen recognition as learned from several here at this gathering and beyond of the urgency of our action. Which was to throw some light on the powerful link between the training in intelligence at Ft. Huachuca and the awful practice of torture at Guantanamo, in Iraq, Afghanistan and in many other places where enhanced interrogation is practiced. Our intention was and is to expose the truth as to what's happening and to put a stop to torture, to warfare and to the nuclear threat and all that threatens the existence of this planet.
People ask, what is it that motivated you at this time to act as you did? I would venture to say that Betsy and Mary have similar reasons to my own. Betsy and I were codefendants at the School of the Americas a few years ago. Both of us served 6 months as federal prisoners for our action. Bill Quigley was our primary counsel at that time as well as now. Mary and I were both engaged with Kathy Kelly and the Iraq Peace Team just before the invasion of Iraq, 2003. My own story of involvement here in southern Arizona begins with the trial of Louie Vitale and Steve Kelly. I was privileged to attend most of their court appearances here in Tucson. There was one of these that clinched my resolve to act this past November. It was the time when Bill and Debbie Quigley were wheeling large suitcases into the courtroom filled with manuals and documents proving without doubt the connection between Ft. Huachuca and the most heinous forms of torture carried out by our military and conscripted civilians in Guantanamo and Iraq. Most of the evidence came from agencies of the federal government itself. Though the proof was powerful and obvious it was not admissible for the trial. That more than all else gave reason for myself and others to keep on shining the light as to what's really happening and take a risk to act.
I am inspired by the encouragement and solidarity YOU give me tonight and throughout these events. My special thanks and hugs to Felice and Jack who never seem to get tired in their powerful dedication to us in prison and to all their involvement in justice and peace issues. Gratitude also goes to my dear friar brother and support person who is reading this statement for me, Brother David Buer. Then there are the hundreds of folks who keep contact through letters and visits, some of you right here. My thanks go also to Steve and Louie who paved the way to my action, and I am so grateful to my codefendants who continue to inspire me. Thank you to the team of wonderful lawyers - and you notice Bill Quigley has been at the helm of almost everything that I have done right for the past several years! My Franciscan leaders should be very pleased YOU ALL are the ones who help me live out my calling to follow Jesus and Francis of Assisi. How blessed I am. What a compassionate God we have. How can I keep from singing?
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Mary Burton RiseleyPresentencing Statement, Feb. 4, 2008
I walked through the orange barriers at Fort Huachuca last November 18th because I love my country and I can't bear that our government is ordering, or even condoning, acts of torture in our names. I grew up in the Marine Corps. My Dad retired as a Lieutentant General when I was seventeen, but our family enjoyed a love of country infused with Thomas Jefferson's dictum that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Our dinner conversations were spiced with passionate arguments about FDR, Hiroshima and farm subsidies.
I'm sure my father is rolling over in his grave now, because he was proud of how much more humanely we treated our Japanese and German prisoners of war that ours were treated. He would agree with Senator John McCain that in the matter of torture, the question is not who they are, it is who we are.
When will we ever learn? That acts of violence and debasement create enemies never endingly, as the families and tribes and countries of the killed or tortured will hate us until some kind of meaningful reconciliation is engaged. We are only able to treat people in these despicable ways because we morally exclude them; because we place them outside our scope of justice, outside the circle within which we treat others as we would want to be treated. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Love your enemies." In the Book of John, he said "Love overcomes fear, and perfect love overcomes all fear." Love, not torture, is the anvil on which we will forge a world of peace and cooperation.
The problems that humanity faces now are so vast that they can only be solved by working together, by making our scope of justice into an "I that is we," with "we" including every human being, everywhere on the planet. Climate change, weapons of global mass destruction, epidemics of new diseases--we must find a way to listen to each other and act from our hearts, not from greed and fear, or we will perish from the earth like the dinosaurs. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "The choice is no longer between violence and non-violence, but between violence and survival." Our action in November was a small one, dignified and prayerful, as you saw in the video just shown. Our action was taken in the spirit of the Nuremburg Accords, i.e., "Individuals have international duties which transcend the natural obligations of obedience . . . (they) have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring. We sought to prevent acts of torture by talking to those who would be exposed to its temptations, in Iraq, Afghanistan or at Gitmo. If we had been allowed entry onto the Base with our leaflets and our love, no one would have been harmed.
Last night was the Festival of Hope, and our small action was undertaken in hopefulness. Hope is a verb and a practice, not a noun. Joe Volk, executive director of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, gave us this concept. He said, "When you bring your deepest values into a situation of some risk, that is the practice and activity of hope." Henri Nouwen wrote, "In the grateful life, everything that happens is an occasion to deepen your heart, to strengthen your love and to broaden your hope." I do not want to go to prison, but if I do I hope I may follow Betsy's and Jerry's good example of creative and loving service inside. May I experience any time there in just that way--deepening my heart, strengthening my love and broadening my hope. Thank you.
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