Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Cindy Sheehan convicted of trespassing

Cindy Sheehan convicted of trespassing
Front page / World
12/12/2006 10:35 Source:
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who emerged as one of the most vocal
opponents of the Iraq war after her son was killed in the conflict,
left a courthouse convicted of trespassing and redelivered the
petitions that originally led to her legal trouble.
Sheehan and three other women were acquitted on Monday of disorderly
conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing government administration
but were convicted of trespassing for leading a protest across the
street from the United Nations. They had faced up to a year in jail if
convicted of all counts.
A judge sentenced them to conditional discharge, which means they will
not face any punishment as long as they do not get arrested in the
next six months. The judge also ordered them to pay $95 (72 euros) in
court surcharges.
"We should have just gotten a desk appearance ticket, but they piled
on our charges so we had to stay all night in (jail) that night,"
Sheehan said after the verdict. "Twenty-five soldiers were killed last
week while we were in court wasting our time."
Sheehan and about 100 other members of a group called Global Exchange
were rebuffed last March when they attempted to take a petition with
some 72,000 signatures to the U.S. Mission's headquarters near the
United Nations.
Sheehan and the defendants ignored police orders to leave and were
reading the petition aloud on the sidewalk when police moved in. The
women sat on the sidewalk and were carried to patrol wagons.
Prosecutors said they were arrested after ignoring police orders to
disperse.
After the verdict, the women immediately left the courthouse and
headed for the U.S. Mission to redeliver the petitions and ask for an
apology.
They were met in the lobby of the building by Richard A. Grenell,
director of external affairs for the U.S. Mission, and Peggy Kerry,
the mission's liaison for non-governmental organizations and sister of
Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and former presidential
candidate.
Grenell said the document he accepted was 1 1/2 pages, double-spaced
and contained 32 names signed with an aqua blue marker. He said they
presented this to him after apparently being unable to find the
petition that the women had said contained some 72,000 signatures.
In explaining why he accepted a document from the group this time
around, Grenell said, "We accept petitions every single day, even
without an appointment. What we don't do is accept them in front of a
staged media event."
Kerry refused to meet with the women in the presence of Sheehan and
the news media during the earlier protest. She testified during the
trial that the presentation seemed like a publicity stunt.
Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, California, lost her 24-year-old son Casey
in Iraq in April 2004. She has since drawn international attention
after camping outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war,
the AP reports.
"Christmas time is hard for me because that's the last time I saw my
son," she said Monday. "Could you imagine that a family would have to
suffer for the rest of their lives? Christmas is never going to be
happy for them. Christmas will never be happy for me again."
The jury trial began Dec. 5 in Manhattan Criminal Court. Sheehan's
co-defendants were Melissa Beattie, 57, of New York; Patricia
Ackerman, 48, of Nyack, New York, and Susan "Medea" Benjamin, 54, of
San Francisco.
http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/12-12-2006/85876-Cindy_Sheehan-0

 court surcharges.
Peccato.  L'avrei vista volentieri in galera, visto che non ha alcun
rispetto per la legge.
Speriamo che si faccia arrestare di nuovo nei prossimi sei mesi, cosi'
la pena la prende in pieno.
-Stefano