Contact: Voices In The Wilderness-(Chicago): 773-784-8065
For Immediate Release

(Chicago)–Voices in the Wilderness (VITW) filed an Answer and Counter Claim in US District Court in Washington DC on Friday September 26, 2003, in response to the fines for bringing medicine and relief to Iraq. A $20,000 penalty was first threatened in December 1998 by the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), but was not actually imposed until November 2002, at the height of the Bush Administration’s preparation to invade Iraq. At that time VITW was sponsoring a team of US civilians and other internationals in Baghdad; they remained there from October 2002 through April 2003 as witnesses against war and in sympathy with the ordinary people of Iraq.