Contact:
Angela Garcia (773) 784-8065
John Farrell (773) 619-2418 (on site)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
US Treasury Department Prosecutes Americans For Bringing Medicines to Iraq

(Chicago, Illinois) Voices in the Wilderness (ViTW) will appear in the US District Court Building in Washington, D.C. on Friday, June 4, 2004 at 9:30 a.m. facing charges in excess of $20,000.00 in civil fines being imposed by the US Department of Treasury for “exporting medicines to Iraq.”

ViTW delegates from across the country will be present at the US District Court Building (333 Constitution Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C.) and will hold a press conference immediately following the ruling in the case. Voices delegates will also be available for interviews between 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. in Lafayette Park (Pennsylvania Avenue at 16th Street, NW).

“The US government has no business punishing people for bringing medicine to Iraq, while its sanctions and occupation cause the daily deaths of Americans and Iraqis and continue to create a desperate need for medicine and basic goods for many Iraqis,” stated Bill Quigley, ViTW lawyer and professor of law at Loyola University, New Orleans, LA. Mr. Quigley traveled to Iraq with a ViTW delegation months prior to the latest US led invasion.

ViTW has campaigned to end economic and military warfare against the Iraqi people since 1996. They have organized over seventy delegations to Iraq in deliberate violation of UN economic sanctions and US law. “There is another America, which is not reflected by the images of torture and destruction that have come to symbolize the US presence in Iraq, which was shown in some small way by our efforts and those of others working against economic sanctions,” stated Kathy Kelly, co-founder of ViTW and three time Nobel Peace prize nominee.

ViTW is counter-suing the U.S. Government for reparations for the Iraqi people due to the catastrophic effects of 14 years of US led economic sanctions. ViTW recognizes that an unjust law is no law at all, and will nonviolently resist all payments, fines, taxes, and laws that perpetuate war and restrict our rights and responsibilities as world citizens. The US Treasury Department has attempted collection in the past, and ViTW has responded each time by refusing payment and raising and delivering thousands of dollars worth of humanitarian aid to hospitals and schools throughout Iraq.

For documents regarding the case, please see http://vitw.org/summons/

For interviews with our legal team or recently returned delegates, 773.784.8065 / info@vitw.org

by Mike Ferner

ABU SIFFA, IRAQ-”How could this happen?” nearly everyone asks these days. But as the U.S. now releases hundreds of men from Abu Ghraib prison, another question, “why were so many Iraqis locked up there in the first place?” is likely to become part of the debate.

The story of this farming hamlet 30 miles north of Baghdad sheds a lot of light on that question.

“On December 16, 2003, at 2:00 am, on a rainy night, all the houses in Abu Siffa, about two dozen, were surrounded by U.S. troops in tanks and humvees. They surrounded the fields of the farmers by tanks and they destroyed the fences of the fields,” citrus farmer, Mohammed Al-Tai explained to a delegation from Christian Peacemaker Teams visiting the village to document detainees’ stories.

Soldiers from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division rounded up two attorneys, 15 schoolteachers, men in their 80’s, a blind man, police officers, young teens, and an elderly man so frail he had to be carried by the soldiers, Al-Tai said. In all, 83 men disappeared that night, virtually every male in the village.