Elderly Protesters Sentenced to Prison
Associated Press
Sun January 25, 2009
Area: Columbus, GA (Opelika, AL)
COLUMBUS, Georgia - Five protesters were sentenced Monday to serve 60 days in prison for federal trespassing charges stemming from a November 23, 2008, rally at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Eric LeCompte with watchdog group School of the Americas Watch named those sentenced as: Episcopal priest Louis Barrios, 56, of New York City; Roman Catholic nun Diane Pinchot, 63, of Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago seminary student Kristin Holm; Al Simmons, 64, of Richmond, Va.; and Theresa Cusimano, 40, of Denver.
LeCompte said Louis Wolf, 68, of Washington, D.C., was given six months of house arrest because of medical problems.
They appeared in U.S. District Court in Columbus.
Four of those sentenced were charged fines between $250 and $1,000. Two protesters will not have to pay fines.
The group is demanding the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation - formerly known as the School of the Americas - because of human rights abuses in Latin America.
School of Americas Watch protests each November outside Fort Benning to mark the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. A United National panel concluded that some of the killers had attended the School of Americas.
Police said the November rally drew about 8,500 protesters, though organizers said the attendance was nearly three times that number.
LeCompte called the sentences "harsh" for people who were "walking onto a base and praying."
"So many of these soldiers who have committed these abuses have never seen the inside of a jail, let alone gone to trial," LeCompte said by phone from the courthouse in Columbus. "It's ironic."
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