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Anti-Drone War Protesters Given Time Served

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AP is reporting: “A judge says protesters’ moral opposition to drone warfare overseas didn’t absolve them of guilt for trespassing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada in April 2009. Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen delivered a 20-page ruling Thursday finding a group dubbing themselves the ‘Creech 14’ guilty of trespassing at the base about 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The judge sentenced each to credit for time already served in jail and sent them on their way.

“‘Go in peace,’ he said.”

See Las Vegas Sun report

KATHY KELLY, JOHN DEAR, JIM HABER
Haber is co-coordinator of the Nevada Desert Experience. John Dear is a Jesuit priest. He said today: “Creech Air Force Base is home to the latest high-tech weapons that use unmanned aerial systems to carry out surveillance and increasingly lethal attack missions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.”

Kelly, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, said today: “It’s criminal for the U.S. people to spend $2 billion per week for war in Afghanistan that maims, kills and displaces innocent civilians who’ve meant us no harm. …

“Judge Jansen said we were guilty because drone operations at Creech Air Force Base don’t pose an imminent danger. An airman at Creech wrote, ‘I am 7,000 miles away from the killing … I am 18 inches away from the killing.’ He was referring to his proximity to seeing human beings dismembered on the video screen.

“In Afghanistan, I met a family displaced by a drone attack in the Helmand Province. One man showed me the photos of his children’s bloodied corpses. The drone attack killed his spouse and his five children. In the Charahi Qambar refugee camp, I sat next to Juma Gul, a nine-year-old girl whose arm was amputated by the same drone attack. She was punished horribly even though she committed no crime. We want to be in solidarity with her.”

The Creech 14 are: Fr. John Dear; Dennis Duvall; Renee Espeland; Judy Homanich; Kathy Kelly; Fr. Steve Kelly; Mariah Klusmire; Brad Lyttle; Libby Pappalardo; Sr. Megan Rice; Brian Terrell; Eve Tetaz; Fr. Louie Vitale; and Fr. Jerry Zawada.

For more

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167