Sun, Jul 06, 2008

Tucson Region

Ft. Huachuca protesters out of jail; two years of probation ordered

By Stephanie Innes
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.05.2008
Two protesters, including a Catholic priest, were released from jail Monday and sentenced to probation for trespassing at Fort Huachuca.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Marshall ordered 70-year-old Franciscan priest Jerome Zawada of Las Vegas and 69-year-old Frances Elizabeth Lamb of Bend, Ore., to two years of supervised probation plus either a $5,000 fine or 500 hours of community service.
Marshall found the pair guilty of illegally entering Fort Huachuca while protesting military intelligence training there Nov. 18. They were also found guilty of failing to obey a police officer. Fort Huachuca is about 75 miles southeast of Tucson.
Zawada and Lamb had been jailed at a federal detention center in Florence since Dec. 6.
A third protester, 65-year-old Mary Burton Riseley of Cliff, N.M., also was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and 500 hours of community service. Riseley had been out of custody since the arrest.
Military officials said the trio wanted to be arrested, and trespassed despite warnings.
Prosecutors had said Zawada and Lamb were flight risks because they have failed to heed court orders in other jurisdictions. Outside the courthouse Monday, Zawada said he expects to continue his activities now that he's out of custody.
Zawada has a decades-long record of public resistance to nuclear weapons and war.
The defendants, who say they acted on social conscience, knelt in prayer when military officials stopped them at Fort Huachuca.
Two other Catholic priests — the Rev. Louis J. Vitale, 74, and the Rev. Steve Kelly, 58 — were arrested in November 2006 for trespassing at Fort Huachuca and are serving prison sentences. They are scheduled to be released in March.
Like the trio arrested in November, Vitale and Kelly were protesting military-intelligence interrogation training at the time of their arrest.
Protesters say they want an inquiry by a congressional committee into how interrogators have been trained, and to look at whether it's possible to bring civilian oversight to any facility where military interrogators are trained.
Military officials maintain their training adheres to the Geneva Convention, which prohibits "cruel treatment and torture."