Posted on 01/12/2008 7:09:25 AM PST by SandRat
SIERRA VISTA — Police Friday arrested 80 protesters outside the U.S. Supreme Court, but there were no such arrests or incidents near the Fort Huachuca Main Gate, though the content of the protest was the same.
In observance of an “International Day of Action,” organizers from the Tucson-based Torture on Trial were in Sierra Vista, protesting for about an hour against the mere existence of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, as well as allegations of human rights violations, said Jack Cohen-Joppa of Torture on Trial.
The fort is the home to the 309th Military Intelligence Battalion, which trains human intelligence collectors.
In front of Fort Huachuca in November, three protesters affiliated with Torture on Trial were arrested for trespassing by post law enforcement, and there were similar arrests by post police in November 2006.
Friday’s protest was without incident.
“We’ve been coming down here a couple of times a year at least in the last two years,” Cohen-Joppa said.
Protests and counterprotests have taken place annually in front of the fort for the last four years.
But just more than a dozen protesters were present Friday, and no counter protests were heard except for one invective tossed by a nearby business owner before the protest officially began at 2 p.m., near the intersection of Buffalo Soldier Trail and Fry Boulevard.
Lt. Col. Matt Gardner, spokesman for the post, said the short protest was without incident.
Just in case, a few Sierra Vista police on the city side and military police on the fort side were on hand.
Typically this protest group has not been a problem for city police, but the counterprotesters in the past have been a little troublesome, Sierra Vista police Lt. Gilbert Fuentes said.
Cohen-Joppa said military officials indicate they are in accordance with the rules of war, but his organization disagrees.
“We’re here to call upon the military, if they want to truly honor the Geneva Convention, then they should refuse to serve at Guantanamo. The mere existence of Guantanamo is a violation of international law to include the Geneva Convention,” Cohen-Joppa said. “And in the past, and to an extent that we do not truly know in the present, coercive interrogation techniques are being used. It’s my understanding that’s torture. This would be a matter of conscientious objection, and it would be a matter of adhering to the Geneva Conventions if they refused to serve.”
Cohen-Joppa said his organization would legally support as best it could, any interrogator who refused an assignment to Guantanamo.
“We’ll be back down here, probably, not as a planned event but I would not be surprised if a number of people came down here to a vigil in early February,” he said.
The people arrested at the protest last fall have a federal court date at that time, he said. Two of them remain in federal custody.
“I’m an Old Bisbee activist with a lot of experience,” said Mary Elinor Adams, who is known as “Walking Mary,” has lived in Bisbee for 16 years and was at the hourlong protest. “The interrogation specialists are trained here, and we would like for them to choose going to the brig instead of going to Guantanamo.”
Another protester, Judy Plank, said she spends the winters in Douglas and the rest of the year back in Remsen, Iowa.
“I just came from the Iowa caucuses, and I offered a resolution against torture and to close Guantanamo, and it passed unanimously. And to put that into context, they did not pass ending the funding for the war,” Plank said. “But people really don’t want torture, and they want to close Guantanamo.”
Protester Roger Cuthbertson of Apache Junction wore a black hood and orange jumpsuit, familiar from the well-known photographs that came out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
He, too, identified himself as a “snowbird,” who spends his winters in Arizona and his summers in Minnesota.
“These so-called enhanced interrogation techniques — all of that — a lot of people in America think that’s not so bad,” Cuthbertson said. “But they (the prisoners) are deliberately made to regress to an infantile stage of development.”
Cuthbertson said he entered the Peace Corps in 1962, a year after the institution started, and was sent to the Philippines.
A man who gave only his first name, “Robert,” was nearby and was asking the protesters if they minded being photographed.
“They have a right to believe what they believe, so I’m glad they are here. However, being an interrogator, I have an inside tack and I know that we don’t teach torture at this post,” the man said.
Cuthbertson told “Robert” that he doubted the man’s intentions and doubted who he said he was.
Another man at the demonstration, Army veteran Jim Bretney, also took pictures of the demonstrators. He said he works at the fort as a software engineer. He said his digital photos are for his blog site.
That blog can be accessed by logging onto www.theundiscoveredcountry.blogspot.com.
“Before I went to the war, I used to demonize these people, but after 9-11, red or blue doesn’t really make a difference. Everybody’s blood is red,” Bretney said.
He gave a middle-of-the-road opinion about the protesters’ agenda.
“On some things, they have a point, and other things I patently disagree with,” he said.
Bretney said he understands and condones a need for secrecy in certain aspects, but interrogation policy should be further considered by leaders and lawmakers, nevertheless.
HERALD/REVIEW reporter Gentry Braswell can be reached at 515-4680 or by e-mail at gentry.braswell@svherald.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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