{"id":7238,"date":"2010-06-15T12:18:38","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T20:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=7238"},"modified":"2010-06-15T12:18:38","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T20:18:38","slug":"twenty-four-anti-torture-activists-acquitted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/15\/twenty-four-anti-torture-activists-acquitted\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty-Four Anti-Torture Activists Acquitted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Breaking: Twenty-Four Anti-Torture Activists Acquitted in Trial for Protest at the US Capitol Calling for Guantanamo&#8217;s Closure and the Investigation of Deaths at the Prison.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.witnesstorture.org\/acquittal-pr\">WitnessTorture.org<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On Monday, June 14, twenty-four activists with Witness Against Torture were acquitted in Washington, D.C. Superior Court of charges of &#8220;unlawful entry with disorderly conduct.&#8221;  The charges stemmed from demonstrations at the US Capitol on January 21,2010 &#8211; the date by which President Obama had promised the closure of the Guantanamo detention camp.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With his decision, the judge validated the effort of the demonstrators to condemn the ongoing crime of indefinite detention at Guantanamo,&#8221; says Bill Quigley, legal adviser to the defendants and the Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our acquittal is a victory for free speech and for the right of Americans to stand up for those falsely imprisoned and abused at Guantanamo,&#8221; says Ellen Graves, one of the defendants.  &#8220;We tried to shine a light on the unconstitutional policies of the Bush and now the Obama administrations.  That light shone brightly today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will use our freedom to continue to work for the day when Guantanamo is closed and those who designed and carried out torture policies are held to account,&#8221; says defendant Paul Thorson.<\/p>\n<p>On January 21, activists dressed as Guantanamo prisoners were arrested on the steps of the Capitol holding banners reading &#8220;Broken Promises,Broken Laws, Broken Lives.&#8221;  Inside the Capitol Rotunda, at the location where deceased presidents lie in state, fourteen activists were arrested performing a memorial service for three men who died at Guantanamo in 2006.  Initially reported as suicides, the deaths may have been &#8211; as recent evidence suggests &#8211; the result of the men being tortured to death (see [the other] Scott Horton, &#8220;Murders at Guantanamo, March, 2010, <em>Harper&#8217;s<\/em>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.witnesstorture.org\/acquittal-pr\"><strong>WitnessTorture.org<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Breaking: Twenty-Four Anti-Torture Activists Acquitted in Trial for Protest at the US Capitol Calling for Guantanamo&#8217;s Closure and the Investigation of Deaths at the Prison. From WitnessTorture.org: On Monday, June 14, twenty-four activists with Witness Against Torture were acquitted in Washington, D.C. Superior Court of charges of &#8220;unlawful entry with disorderly conduct.&#8221; The charges stemmed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_social_image_id":0,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3,66,9],"tags":[689,199,704],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guantanamo","category-news","category-torture","category-war-crimes","tag-guantanamo","tag-murder","tag-torture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":false,"_social_image_url":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7241,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238\/revisions\/7241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7238"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}