the first paragraph of the
SOA Watch website report says it all
Columbus, GA – The week after a military jury in Colorado decided not to jail an Army interrogator even after they found him guilty of negligent homicide in the torture and killing of an Iraqi detainee, a federal judge in Columbus, Georgia is sentencing nonviolent activists to federal prison.
This morning, Judge G. Mallon Faricloth sentenced nine human rights advocates, including Delmar Schwaller, an 81-year-old retired man, to between one and six months in prison; eight of those individuals were also fined between $500 and $1,000. Twenty-one people still face charges, and trials continue. Each person faces a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
The 32 defendants, ranging in age from 19 to 81, are charged with trespass after peacefully walking onto the Fort Benning military base in protest of a controversial Army training school located there. Those arrested were among 19,000 who gathered in November of 2005 outside the gates of Fort Benning to demand a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy and the closure of the controversial U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation (SOA/ WHINSEC).
America is certainly 'Land of the Brave' as the SOAW activists prove but whether the US is 'Home of the Free' remains questionable.