Peacemakers Held Without Bail
July 5, 2006

In a telephone conversation from the Burleigh County Jail in North Dakota, Greg Boertje-Obed said that the hearing in the U.S. District Court in Bismarck that he and the other peacemakers were at today was a combined detention hearing and probable cause hearing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clare Hochhalter argued that Carl Kabat, Greg Boertje-Obed and Mike Walli were a danger and a continuing threat to the the community. U.S. Magistrate Charles Miller offered the men release under certain conditions, but the men said that in effect they would follow their conscience. The judge then ordered that they be held without bail and told the peacemakers that they could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The judge appointed three attorney advisors for the three pro-se defendants.

At the hearing an FBI agent testified that there has been a 24 hour guard on the site, and that workers are repairing the spin dial lock, and that eventual costs may be 25,000 dollars.

The peacemakers were told that there would be a pretiral hearing soon, and that trial would be in early September.

One can only ponder on who or what is the real threat to our community? Nonviolent peacemakers who want a world where there aren't weapons of mass destruction, or people who build, threaten and use weapons which cause suffering in their use and in the consequent loss of resources for the poor and average citizens?

One can wonder why these nonviolent peacemakers are held without bail. As I look on the web I find that people held without bail are for the most part those charged with murder or kidnapping. Yet these peacemakers are refusing to kill and even refusing to let others kill in their name.

The three men went to a Minuteman missile silo in North Dakota and hammered on various parts of the silo, saying that this weapon of mass destruction is against all international law and God's law.

posted by Susan Crane
(new AP article)