Louis Vitale OFM: A letter from the Imperial County jail; Sojourners, 1/7/08; A founder of the Nevada Desert Experience and a former Franciscan provincial, was released from prison on March 14, 2008. Vitale serves as the “action advocate” for Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service (paceebene.org) in Las Vegas and is currently speaking throughout the U.S. about his prison experience and the call to end torture.
It was the evening of October 16, 2007, and Stephen Kelly, SJ, and I were due in court the next day for our non-violent witness against torture nearly a year earlier. That night we received a call from retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the man who wrote the U.S. Army’s report on the actions Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. He told us, “History will honor your actions.” The next day a magistrate in a Tucson, Arizona, courtroom reached a different conclusion, and sent us to prison for five months. And so I write from the Imperial County jail in El Centro, California, behind bars for challenging the training of interrogators at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. In November 2006, Father Kelly and I had gone to Fort Huachuca to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture. We hoped to speak with enlisted personnel about the illegality and immorality of torture, but were arrested as we knelt in prayer halfway up the driveway at the Army base.Mohandas Gandhi said that the cell door is the door to freedom. In freely entering the Imperial prison in India and the Imperial County jail in California — there is nothing more to fear.
See: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.home
Tags: Human Rights, Torture, USA