c. 1996 Religion News Service

COLUMBUS, Ga. (RNS)-In a trial that looked beyond the official charge-criminal trespass at a U.S. Army base-to issues of free speech, religious conviction and U.S. foreign policy, Louisiana priest Roy Bourgeois was found guilty Monday (April 29) and sentenced to the maximum six months in prison in connection with protests at Fort Benning, Ga., home of the controversial School of the Americas.

It was the third time that Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, former Navy lieutenant awarded a Purple Heart in Vietnam, and longtime anti-war activist, had been sentenced for protests at the base.

He and nine co-defendants-including a 74-year-old Ursuline nun, two World War II veterans, a mother of eight, a lawyer and a psychologist-were arrested Nov. 16 on the sixth anniversary of the murders of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter by Salvadoran troops. Of the 31 officers cited by a U.N. Truth Commission for the massacre and its coverup, 22 were graduates of the school.

The Truth Commission also cited 10 graduates for overseeing the massacre of 900 unarmed men, women and children in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote. And it identified a now-dead graduate, Roberto d’Aubuisson, as the head of Salvadoran death squads who ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.

Just as Monday’s legal battle was not confined to the charge for which Bourgeois and his co-defendants were on trial, neither was the day’s drama limited to the courtroom.

Excerpts from a documentary, in which Latin American soldiers say the School of the Americas taught them torture techniques, were banned as evidence but shown during a noon news conference with U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass.

The guilty verdict was not a surprise.

In a pretrial stipulation, Bourgeois, of Lutcher, La., and his co-defendants admitted trespassing at Fort Benning as part of a campaign of protest against the school. The trespass charge stems from a regulation forbidding partisan political activity on the Army base.

Federal prosecutors rested their case after submitting the stipulation, clearing the way for the defendants’ attorneys to launch into a First Amendment defense.

They argued that politicians and other school supporters routinely are allowed to make political speeches and statements defending the school from criticism that it has trained dictators and death squad organizers throughout Latin America.

Prosecutors argued that those speeches were made by people in an official capacity.

In trespassing on the base, defendants told the court, they were obeying a higher law that commanded them to speak out against the violence committed by graduates of the school.

The Pentagon has defended the school as a promoter of human rights and democracy and a vital instrument of U.S. foreign policy.

The defendants painted it as a symbol of U.S. complicity in the repression of Latin American peasants and anti-government reformers, especially clergy.

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The 50-year-old academy, based at Fort Benning since 1984 after being moved from the Canal Zone in Panama, has graduated 10 dictators and hundreds of officers implicated in atrocities.

Alumni include the key organizers of Honduras’ Battalion 3-16 death squad, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Gen. Hugo Banzer, who led a coup in Bolivia and later sheltered Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

The school caused a stir in the late 1980s when it enrolled Banzer in its Hall of Fame and hung his portrait in its main hall.

In giving Banzer its highest honor,”the school shows just how committed it is to democracy,”Bourgeois, a missionary tortured by Banzer’s officers, has said.”How can you take their commitment seriously when they invite war criminals to speak at their graduations?”Bourgeois also has said, referring to Guatemalan Gen. Hector Gramajo, guest speaker at the school’s 1991 commencement. Six months before he spoke, Gramajo was sued in a U.S. court for war crimes against several Guatemalans and Ursuline nun Dianna Ortiz, who was raped and tortured. In 1995, he was found liable by default.

Ortiz is now staging a silent vigil and hunger strike near the White House to pressure the U.S. government to release documents relating to her case.

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In Monday’s trial, Judge Robert Elliott, who has sentenced Bourgeois twice before to maximum sentences for demonstrations at the base, refused to allow the defense to admit excerpts from a documentary film being produced by Robert Richter, whose 1995 documentary on the training center,”School of Assassins,”was nominated for an Academy Award.

The excerpts played during the noon recess featured Jose Valle, a former member of Battalion 3-16.

Valle said he took a course in military intelligence at the school and was shown videos of torture techniques.

In another excerpt, a second graduate said homeless people were taken off the streets in Panama and tortured to teach trainees the techniques.

Kennedy said that if the graduates were willing to testify, he would consider requesting a congressional inquiry.

The school steadfastly has denied ever teaching torture.

The two women among the defendants were first sentenced to probation while the men, other than Bourgeois, got sentences ranging from two months to four months. When the women told the judge they would prefer the same fate as the men, Elliott complied, sentencing each to two months.”One day this school, which has caused so much suffering in Latin America, will be closed,”said Bourgeois, who vowed to continue his campaign from prison.

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