VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE: The remaining international Greenpeace activists who pleaded guilty to trespass conspiracy for protesting last July's missile interceptor test have been sentenced. On April 12, Germans Tom Knappe and Matthias Pendzailek were given one year probation by the federal court in Los Angeles. Probation was also the sentence for four other activists sentenced on April 15: Henk Haazen (three years), Brent Maness (two years), Dan Rudie (one year), and Guy Levacher (18 months). Two journalists, arrested as they accompanied the Greenpeace ships on the coastal action, were also sentenced April 15. Steve Morgan received one year probation, and Jorge Torres received time served for three days already spent in jail.

In addition to the plea agreement stipulating that Greenpeace USA staff will not break the law at U.S. Star Wars bases for five years, Greenpeace Inc. and the Greenpeace Fund also agreed to pay the government $150,000 in investigation costs and fines. Another Star Wars opponent now on probation, Marcus Page, suspects his conviction for trespass on the federal installation last May led recently to unexpected attention and post 9-11 accusations. Page was returning to his New Mexico home after taping radio interviews with the editors of this newsletter and others in Tucson. Police said he was speeding, and after checking on his identity and record, Page was handcuffed and told the FBI listed him as affiliated with a terrorist organization. The self-identified Christian pacifist and former director of Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based nuclear abolition organization focused on the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, was eventually freed to go with only the speeding citation. His probation officer has assured Page the incident will not affect his status...

SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS: As this issue goes to press, opponents of the U.S. Army training school at Ft. Benning, Georgia (now known as the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation but colloquially known throughout Latin America as the School of Assassins) are converging on Washington, D.C., for the Monday, April 22 action to end U.S. military aid to Colombia and close the SOA. Steve Jacobs remains in prison (address at Inside and Out) until next July for his repeated trespass at the SOA.

Thirteen people facing federal prosecution for crossing the line at Ft. Benning last November are still anticipating a court date, but no summons have come. Mikel Rebholz of Milwaukee, one of ten School of the Americas Watch resisters arrested at the Pentagon in April, 2001, was convicted last November and sentenced to two years probation. Currently, a 32-day fast is underway daily at the gate to Ft. Benning. Veterans began the fast on March 24, the 22nd anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, and will conclude on the 4th anniversary of the assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi. Both men were killed by graduates of the SOA...

BRITISH AEROSPACE SYSTEMS / NASHUA: Three peace activists stood trial March 14 on charges of trespass. They were arrested on December 10 while praying for peace on the grounds of New Hampshire's largest war industry. Judge Kinghorn permitted defense testimony and expert witnesses to the point that prayer is a religious expression, permitted under Article 5 of the New Hampshire Constitution. Rev. Noelle Damico of the National Justice and Peace Action Ministries of the United Church of Christ, defendant Mary McKay's denomination, testified that McKay's actions were in the tradition of Jesus, who had trespassed in the synagogue on the sabbath to heal a man with a withered hand. She said McKay's action was one of healing prayer, inviting British Aerospace to extend the spiritual equivalent of a withered hand to allow itself to be healed, converting from making weapons to making life-sustaining products. The judge, clearly moved by this and the testimony of defendants Donald Booth and Mary Kate Small, deferred his decision while reviewing Article 5 and related case law. The three were later found guilty and fined $200 plus fees, both suspended pending six months' "good behavior"...

RUSSIAN WHISTLEBLOWERS: Legal appeals challenging the use of secret military decrees in the prosecution of Russian nuclear whistleblowers Aleksander Nikitin and Grigory Pasko, and affecting a few other cases, have turned the tables again. In their most recent rulings this month, the Russian Supreme Court has denied private citizens any right to challenge presidential decrees in court, and refused to consider Pasko's current appeal until a related issue is ruled upon in May. Retired navy officer and ecologist Nikitin and his attorney plan further challenges while military journalist Pasko and arms researcher Igor Sutyagin remain in prison on espionage-related charges based on the disputed decrees. Sutyagin's trial concluded in December, but in the absence of meaningful evidence, the case was merely sent back to the federal police for further investigation - expected to take another six months or more...

LEONARD PELTIER: Progress is reported in defense efforts to gain access to still-classified FBI documents that it is hoped will provide new evidence of innocence and grounds for a new trial for the American Indian Movement political prisoner. A motion for sentence reduction was recently rejected, but legal work also continues on a civil rights complaint to be filed against the FBI. Withheld FBI documents will also be sought in the discovery phase of the civil complaint. Letters of support for congressional hearings into FBI abuse leading to wrongful convictions are still needed from Peltier supporters, addressed to Rep. Dan Burton of the House Committee on Government Reform, whose office has taken notice of such letters. June 26 will mark 27 years since the military and FBI siege at Oglalla, South Dakota, that resulted in the deaths of one native American and two FBI agents. Peltier was convicted of killing the FBI agents. On the day of the incident, corrupt Pine Ridge tribal leader Dickie Wilson was secretly signing away mineral rights under thousands of reservation acres to uranium and fossil fuel mining companies...

ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS: A Hennepin County jury has convicted 15 activists of trespassing last November 7 at the Edina, Minnesota, producer of such indiscriminate weapons as land mines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium ammo. Eleven of the fifteen were sentenced immediately after the March 27 trial to ten days in jail or 10 days community service. Several plan to serve the jail time in solidarity with prisoners here and abroad who are not allowed alternatives, and to highlight the devastating impact of Alliant's weapons and warfare on the earth and its inhabitants. Four remain to be sentenced April 24. The fifteen activists include: Tom Bottolene, John Braun, Steve Clemens, Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ, Rita Foster, CSJ, Mary Ellen Halverson, Kate McDonald, CSJ, Rita McDonald, CSJ, Char Madigan, CSJ, Liz Moorhead, Mary Lou Ott, Pepperwolf, Barb Pratt, Kathleen Ruona and Rita Steinhagen, CSJ. They are among 25-50 people who vigil at Alliant every Wednesday morning...

NORTHWOOD MILITARY HEADQUARTERS: Three London Catholic Workers were convicted March 28 of criminal damage last December 10, when they poured red paint over the sign at the military base in northwest London. Scott Albrecht, Sr. Susan Clarkson and Ciaron O'Reilly were ordered to pay £200 for clean-up and given a conditional discharge. Several others arrested the same day at Northwood still await trial...

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE: Colorado Springs residents Donna Johnson, Peter Sprunger-Froese and Bill Sulzman were sentenced in city court on March 12 to the maximum $500 fine for trespass. An appeal is underway, as the activists continue to stand behind their attempted citizen's arrest of General Ralph Eberhart of the U.S. Space Command last August 9...

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE: More than three years after their December, 1998 blockade of the Missouri base in charge of transportation logistics for Operation Desert Fox attacks on Iraq, seven people had the resulting state criminal charges dismissed. For almost two years, the court had sat on a motion to permit a defense based on international law, leaving the question undecided...

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY: Four Baltimore activists were finally arraigned in federal court on charges resulting from their arrest last October 12. The day before international protests against space warfare, Ellen Barfield, Sister Carol Gilbert OP, Max Obuszewski, and Sister Ardeth Platte OP had again attempted to deliver a letter to the agency director asking that the NSA turn away from support for "missile defense", and instead embrace the true security of global justice. They were arraigned March 22 on charges of trespass, destruction of government property (blood was poured to symbolize deaths resulting from agency operations), and conspiracy. The defendants filed two motions: one demanding information about them and their organizations held by intelligence agencies, and another to protect such information from destruction. The federal prosecutor was ordered to respond to the motions by April 1, but instead replied April 5 with a motion to dismiss. The motion was granted April 8, and the four vowed to continue protests at the agency offices in Ft. Meade, Maryland...

DEFENCE SYSTEMS EXHIBITION: Emily Apple, convicted of handcuffing herself to a light rail train to prevent it from carrying delegates to the London war trade convention last September, was fined in March. Apple's protest record prompted the trial judge to declare that "society needs a break" from her...

HARTFORD: The cases of 18 people arrested during a police assault on an anti-war march last October are working their way through local courts. Several people have negotiated criminal charges down to a brief probation sentence, while others continue through pretrial hearings. One defendant wrote, "I have gone to court six times, spent a night in jail, and paid $2,700 on a $35,000 bail, all for holding a sign in a march"...

U.S. MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Charges against 47 people arrested January 22 while demanding a change for peace in U.S. policy towards Iraq have been dismissed...

SILO PRUNING HOOKS: After preparing the statement for her anticipated probation revocation hearing (printed in the most recent past issue of the Nuclear Resister), Helen Woodson writes that "hearings were scheduled twice and both times they didn't show up. The latest word is they're never going to see me." Woodson sent along a subsequent copy of her Program Review Report, indicating her projected release date and release method (expiration of sentence, statutory good time, etc.) are both "unknown"...