Biography
Convicted in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia under 18 U.S.C. § 1382 (entering a military reservation) for participating in the School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) annual nonviolent civil-disobedience action at Fort Benning, Georgia on September 2002. The action targeted the U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) — formerly the School of the Americas — which had trained Latin American military officers later linked to assassinations, torture, and massacres including Romero, the four U.S. churchwomen, the Jesuits in El Salvador, El Mozote, and Plan Cóndor. Defendants typically received 3 to 6 months in federal custody plus a fine.
Thomas Mahedy crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during the November 2001 SOA Watch vigil to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas / WHINSEC. Sentenced to 3 months in federal custody.
Each year on the November anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the University of Central America in San Salvador in 1989, peace activists gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, site of the U.S. Army School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), to commemorate the dead and to call for the school's closure. Hundreds have crossed the line onto the base over four decades of vigils; many have served federal sentences ranging from 30 days to a year for trespass.
