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Roadtrip to Fort Benning Georgia

by Robert Nixon (Robertnixon [at] mindspring.com)
School of the Americas Watch and Veterans For Peace roadtrip to Fort Benning Georgia leaves San Francisco Saturday Morning 8pm from Mission Delores.
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School of the Americas Watch – East Bay
Veterans for Peace, Chapter 22 & 56
PRESS ALERT
5155 Fairfax Avenue For Immediate Release
Oakland, CA 94601
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Press Conference For More Information Contact:
Robert Nixon 510-917-3235
Robertnixon [at] mindspring.com
http://www.soaw.org

When: Friday, November 5, 2004 at 10:00 am
Where: Mission Dolores, 3321 16th and Dolores, San Francisco, CA 94114

TORTURE SURVIVOR CARLOS MAURICIO WILL DESCRIBE HIS HISTORIC JOURNEY TO JUSTICE. VETERANS FOR PEACE ACCOMPANY MAURICO FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO SCENE OF THE CRIME, FORT BENNING, GEORGIA.

Salvadoran Professor Carlos Mauricio survived weeks of torture in his native El Salvador at the hands of Salvadoran troops trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

He will be leaving on a Veterans for Peace bus this Saturday, November 6th Mauricio and nine others start a historic 12 day bus caravan – The Archbishop Romero Resurrection Ride – from Mission Dolores in San Francisco, California to Ft. Benning, Georgia. After visiting the Caesar Chavez Center in the central California valley, they will make speaking stops in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston and New Orleans.

Mauricio’s personal experience of the brutality of graduates of the School of the Americas compelled him to seek justice. In 2002, together with two other plaintiffs, he won a $54 million judgment against two former Salvadoran Ministers of Defense, for their responsibility in his extrajudicial kidnapping and torture. General Jose Guillermo Garcia was a graduate of the School of the Americas, and General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova was honored by the SOA for his “exemplary role in the Salvadoran Army� and gave the graduation address in 1985. Many other notorious Salvadoran human rights abusers were also trained at the School of the Americas.

The School of the Americas/WHINSEC is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers. Its graduates are consistently involved in human rights atrocities and coups, and responsible for thousands of deaths and disappearances. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated the use of torture, extortion and execution.

In a 2003 report, Amnesty International calls for a suspension of training at the SOA/WHINSEC, and an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the school.

SOA Watch (http://www.soaw.org), co-sponsoring the trip with the Stop Impunity Project, works in solidarity with people of Latin America, to change oppressive US foreign policy, and to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC.
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