PRESS RELEASE: Almost 40 Anti-Torture Activists Arrested at White House, Demand Closure of Guantanamo, Bagram, Repeal of NDAA

For Immediate Release

January 12, 2012

 

Contacts:

Frida Berrigan, frida.berrigan@gmail.com, 347 683 4928

Matt Daloisio, daloisio@earthlink.net, 201 264 4424

 

ALMOST FORTY ANTI-TORTURE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED AT WHITE HOUSE

MESSAGE TO OBAMA: NO GUANTANAMO, NO BAGRAM, NO NDAA!!

 

Thirty-seven members of Witness Against Torture were arrested in front

of the White House on Thursday, January 12 around three this

afternoon. Dressed in the iconic Guantanamo orange jumpsuits and black

hoods and accompanied by a cage representing indefinite detention, the

activists were warned to clear the sidewalk by National Park Police or

risk arrest. After occupying the sidewalk for more than three hours,

they were arrested one by one.

 

“We came to the White House because just eleven days ago, President

Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. It is dead

wrong,” says Leah Grady Sayvetz, an activist and college student form

Ithaca, New York arrested this afternoon. “The NDAA makes Guantanamo

near-permanent and expands detention powers just when this terrible

and immoral detention apparatus should be being dismantled.”

 

The activists held signs that said: “NDAA is Guantanamo Forever,” NDAA

is Guantanamo Come Home,” “Shut Down Guantanamo,” “Shut Down Bagram,”

“Release Those Unjustly Bound” and pulled a full-size cage up on the

side walk.

 

Witness Against Torture took the cage to the White House on Saturday,

January 7 and began a twenty-four hour a day vigil that ended on

January 11 at the end of the Ten Years Too Many National Day of Action

to Shut Down Guantanamo.

 

Witness Against Torture, a grassroots movement to shut down

Guantanamo, is completing a ten day “Hungering for Justice”

liquids-only fast today. About one hundred people—in DC and around the

country—participated in the fast and engaged in daily actions in front

of the White House, and elsewhere to call attention to the terrible

injustice that is Guantanamo, Bagram, and secret prisons.

 

www.witnesstorture.org

 

###