Ex-Berkeley man held by Israelis

Oakland Tribune

Ex-Berkeley man held by Israelis
Activist allegedly aided West Bank Palestinians
By Staff Writer: Josh Richman

Saturday, May 11, 2002 - Bay Area activists sought help from an East Bay congresswoman Friday on behalf of a former Berkeley resident who has been held by Israeli authorities for more than a week.

Trevor Baumgartner, 27, reportedly has been on a hunger strike during most of his detention, and was hospitalized late this week. He went to the West Bank in March or April as part of the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian nonviolent resistance organization; he and several other activists were taken into custody May 2.

They were trying to deliver food and medical supplies to Palestinians who had sought refuge from Israeli troops in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. About 10 made it inside the church, but 13 more -- some of whom were providing a decoy to cover the entry -- were arrested by Israeli soldiers.

The activists' advocates say they were not given access to lawyers, and were given deportation orders. Eight of the 13 were deported against their will; Baumgartner and others went on a hunger strike demanding

to leave voluntarily with a letter from Israeli authorities guaranteeing they would not be barred from traveling in Israel to continue doing humanitarian work.

The Israeli authorities apparently granted such an arrangement to one activist, who returned to the United States, but denied the arrangement to Baumgartner and three others from Washington, Virginia and Illinois.

Baumgartner's Bay Area friends brought a petition Friday to the office of U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, urging her to pressure the U.S. State Department to request Israel to release him and the other three Americans without restrictions.

"We have received the petition and we're responding to it," Lee's spokeswoman, Andrew Sousa, said late Friday. He declined further comment, saying any information Lee obtains will be shared with Baumgartner's family.

While living in Berkeley, Baumgartner taught in Poetry for the People, a University of California, Berkeley, program introducing Berkeley High School students to the use of poetry as a tool for self-expression and empowerment.

He also volunteered with the Oakland-based Prison Activist Resource Center and with the Four Winds Cultural Club, an association of Native American women imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin. He moved last year to Seattle, where he has been a child-care worker and a journalist.

Baumgartner's fiancee, Betsy Thorleifson of Brooklyn, N.Y., said Friday she last spoke with him about three days earlier, "before he was put into the hospital. He was pretty weak by then because he hadn't eaten in about six days and he'd stopped drinking water that day."

"I'm concerned about his health and that he be allowed to leave Israel voluntarily and come home," she said.

Because Baumgartner now lives in Seattle, his family and friends also are seeking help from U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher sidestepped most questions about Baumgartner and the other American detainees this week, saying the government had not obtained privacy waivers from them permitting him to speak publicly about their situation.