FT. HUACHUCA'S LINK TO TORTURE OF DETAINEES DETAILED IN FEDERAL COURT; JUDGE CONSIDERING PRETRIAL MOTIONS, WILL SET TRIAL DATE LATER

NEWS RELEASE from the Nuclear Resister newsletter
August 14, 2007

At a pretrial hearing Monday in federal court in Tucson, Arizona, the attorney for two Catholic priests arrested last November outlined why their opposition to torture brought them to Ft. Huachuca, the U.S. Army's military intelligence and interrogation training center in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale and Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly are charged with federal trespass and an Arizona state charge of failure to comply with a police officer.

Loyola University law professor William Quigley argued for dismissal of the charges and against the prosecution motion in limine to prohibit certain testimony at trial. He cited one official government report after another, plus a study by the International Red Cross, each describing in detail the torture suffered by military detainees since 9/11 at the hand of military intelligence personnel and others.

The connection to Ft. Huachuca was personified in Major General Barbara Fast, the head of military intelligence in Iraq at the time the most egregious abuses were first documented, and Commander at Ft. Huachuca when the two priests were arrested for trying to deliver a letter to her denouncing torture and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. (Many of the elements of Quigley's courtroom argument can be read in his "Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss Prosecution of Non-Violent First Amendment Protest Against Illegal Torture" at http://tortureontrial.org/art/MemoSupportDismiss.pdf )

Army Judge Advocate General Capt. Evan Seamone, representing the government, told the court that his witnesses would testify that military interrogators are trained at the base to operate strictly in accord with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law, and are prohibited from using torture. The hundreds of abused prisoners documented in the reports cited by Quigley were the result of aberrant behavior by a few criminals in uniform, or by the CIA or persons other than military intelligence, he asserted.

In the course of the hearing, Magistrate Hector Estrada also chastised Fr. Vitale for possibly violating a pretrial order not to break local, state or federal laws, having been cited just a few days earlier during a Nagasaki Day line-crossing at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site.

Vitale's fitness for release on his own recognizance was ordered to be reevaluated by the court's pretrial services and that report will be sent to the judge later this week. The day-long hearing concluded with Magistrate Estrada taking all of the pretrial motions under advisement. He is expected to decide the issues by the end of the month and then set a date for trial.

For more information, visit http://TortureOnTrial.org - 30 -

A fuller account of the August 13 pretrial hearing including photos taken at a support circle outside court that morning can be found at http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

The report of the only mainstream media journalist attending the hearing is at http://www.svherald.com/articles/2007/08/14/news/doc46c15bb422c37214425069.t xt

A June interview with Fr. Louis Vitale can be viewed at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081307J.shtml