Holidays in jail ordered for Fort Huachuca protesters

This morning, U.S. Magistrate Judge Héctor C. Estrada ordered Franciscan priest Jerome Zawada of Las Vegas, Nev. and Frances Elizabeth Lamb of Bend, Ore. to remain locked up without bail.

A trial is scheduled for Feb 4.

Zawada, 70, and Lamb, 69, were jailed Tuesday after pleading not guilty to charges that they illegally entered Fort Huachuca while protesting military intelligence training at the fort Nov. 18. Fort Huachuca is about 75 miles southeast of Tucson.

Mary Burton Riseley , 65, was arrested at the same time as Lamb and Zawada. Riseley, who is from Cliff, N.M., was released on the condition that she not go within 500 feet of Fort Huachuca. Her next court date is in January.

Military officials said the trio wanted to be arrested and trespassed on the post despite warnings. Prosecutors say Zawada and Lamb are flight risks because they have both failed to heed court orders in other jurisdictions. Capt. Evan Seamone said Lamb is accused of blocking traffic in Bend while protesting the Iraq war, and that she also has a history of trespassing at Fort Benning, Ga., where she has protested the U.S. Army's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, once called The School of the Americas. As a condition of release on her own recognizance in Oregon, Lamb had agreed not to commit any other crime while awaiting trial.

Seamone also told the court that among Zawada's decades-long record of resistance to nuclear weapons and war was an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court for an anti-war arrest in Washington, D.C.

The three defendants, who say they are acting on social conscience, knelt in prayer when military officials stopped them at Fort Huachuca. Riseley is a Quaker and Lamb is Catholic.

They contend the military-intelligence interrogation training at the fort leads military personnel to engage in torture, an accusation the Army denies.

The trio's arrest last month was nearly identical to a scenario at the Sierra Vista Army post last year. On Nov. 19, 2006, two Catholic priests — the Rev. Louis J. Vitale , 74, and the Rev. Steve Kelly, 58 — were also arrested for trespassing. In October, the priests pleaded no contest to trespassing. They are serving five-month sentences in federal prison.