PRIESTLY INSPIRATION - THE FIGHT TO END TORTURE

It is the night before they are to surrender their freedom yet again. Father Louis Vitale, a 74 year old Franciscan Priest and Father Stephen Kelly, a 58 year old Jesuit Priest, are amongst the speakers addressing an audience of their supporters at the First Christian Church in Tucson, Arizona. In the morning, both of them will almost certainly be sentenced to several months in jail for having the temerity to encroach on the sacred soil of Fort Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, the Headquarters of US Military Intelligence, on 19th November 2006.

The Priests, backed up by 120 odd kindred spirits, attempted to serve a letter denouncing both torture and the 2006 Military Commissions Act on Major General Barbara Fast, who is in charge at the Fort, and also happens to be the highest ranking intelligence officer implicated to the Abu Ghraib torture. They also intended to speak to enlisted personnel. Predictably, they were thwarted by military security, and charged with trespass and refusal to obey an officer.

On the same day, more than 20,000 people demonstrated at the infamous School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), at Fort Benning, Georgia. It is there that Latin American military recruits have, since the late 1940’s, been schooled in interrogation and torture techniques. And it is at Fort Huachuca that the US Army Field Manual on Interrogation was written. A number of the officers and soldiers responsible for human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, have worked or were trained there.

Father Kelly, a distinguished and youthful looking 58, his graying hair neatly coiffed, is both steadfast and sanguine. ‘It’s totally worth it to me that consciousness has been raised……In the long run we’ll be in the belly of the beast, then maybe they’ll spit us out and we’ll take it forward again.’

Father Vitale, whilst very tall and striking in his full length, dark brown Franciscan robe, appears somewhat frail and has bruising around his left eye. We hear how he went on hunger strike in front of the White House and how both Priests have a long record of social activism, non-violent protest and subsequent imprisonment.

Father Vitale is co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based movement to end nuclear weapons testing and 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.’ He served 6 months in prison after being arrested at the annual 2005 Fort Benning vigil (over 95 years of prison time and 53 years of probation and home confinement have been served by School of the Americas Watch activists) and was excluded from congressional hearings in September 2006 for his criticism of the Military Commissions Act, which permits evidence gained from the torture of terror suspects and suspends habeus corpus for so-called “enemy combatants.”

Father Kelly is a member of the Redwood City Catholic Worker Community and worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Central America for many years. He has spent time in prison for the nonviolent direct disarmament of nuclear weapon delivery systems. In December 2005, he served as chaplain for Witness Against Torture, a delegation of anti-torture activists who marched across Cuba to the gates of Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

After almost a year of legal wrangling in the courts, the end game would appear to have been reached. In September 2007, the Court granted a government motion ‘in limine’, which renders inadmissible subjects such as torture, Abu Ghraig, international law and the Military Commissions Act. Faced with this gagging order, the Priests declared that they were ‘uninterested in a court hearing limited to who was walking where and how many steps it was to the gate’ and duly decided to change their pleas from ‘not guilty’ to ‘no contest’. They asked to be sentenced immediately.

At the Church, the Priests’ respected human rights attorney and law professor, Bill Quigley, is armed with a huge dossier of reports documenting abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The FBI, a senior US Army General, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Physicians for Human Rights, New York University Law School and Human Rights Watch are amongst those who have produced comprehensive reports.

There are hundreds of pages of damning evidence of torture, all in the public domain, allegedly involving as many as 600 military personnel. So much for the few bad eggs argument. But Quigely’s request to have it all looked at in court in front of a jury was refused.

It is a long time since I have attended an event with quite such a feeling of camaraderie and emotional charge. There are songs about freedom, justice and peace, courtesy of the wonderful guitar and banjo playing peace activist, Ted Warmbrand and prayers asking the Divine One to help us love our enemy. The firebrand Peace Activist and multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kathy Kelly, tells us anecdotes about Palestinian students who were imprisoned and abused by American soldiers in Iraq. In one of the prison compounds, US personnel pinned a photograph of the destroyed Twin Towers on the wall, as though it was a reminder to them of why they were there.

At 7.30 am the following morning, many of those at the Church are holding a vigil outside the US District Court in downtown Tucson. The hearing is imminent. Anti-torture banners are unfurled, speeches are made and songs are sung. Father Vitale talks of ‘the luxury of being able to go to jail, because I’m old and don’t have to earn a living or support anyone.’

The inevitable happens and Fathers Kelly and Vitale are sentenced to 5 months in prison. Before the Judge’s decision, Father Kelly makes the following brief statement: ‘We will keep trying to stop the teaching and practice of torture whether we are sent to jail or not. We have done our part for now. Now it is up to every woman and man of conscience to do our part to stop the injustice of torture.’