US "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the US military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived on Saturday to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects still held at the remote site.
Sheehan is among 12 human rights and anti-war activists who will travel across Cuba next week, arriving at the main gate of the Guantanamo base on Thursday -- five years after the first prisoners were flown in.
"Anyone who knows me knows that I am not afraid of anything," Sheehan said when asked about the possibility of US sanctions for traveling to communist-run Cuba, which remains under a US trade embargo.
PHOTO: EPA
"What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating at Guantanamo," she told reporters.
Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, California, became an anti-war activist known as the "peace mom" after her 24-year-old son Casey was killed in Iraq in April 2004. She drew international attention by camping outside US President George W. Bush's ranch to protest the war, and has been arrested numerous times for trespassing.
Sheehan arrived in Havana early on Saturday evening with trip organizer Medea Benjamin, of the California nonprofit groups Global Exchange and Codepink.
Benjamin said the protesters believe they are exempt from US travel restrictions on Cuba because they were traveling as professional human rights activists who will attend a daylong international conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on Wednesday.
Arriving in the same group was former Army Colonel Ann Wright, who resigned over the war in Iraq; Tiffany Burns of Gold Star Families for Peace, representing relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Adele Welty, mother of firefighter Timothy Welty, who died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The other seven activists were expected to arrive in Havana over the weekend.
"In the names of my son and all the others who died in 9/11, great acts of inhumanity are being perpetuated in Guantanamo and Iraq," Welty said.
The US military still holds about 395 men on suspicion of links to the Taliban or al-Qaeda, including about 85 who have been cleared to be released or transferred to other countries. The military says it wants to charge 60 to 80 detainees and bring them to trial.
Wright said that the group's protest outside the Guantanamo base will coincide with demonstrations around the world calling on the US to shut the remote prison.
"There needs to be justice, just not with a military prison," she said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion