Asheville activist arrested during Guantanamo protest

I’m posting this because I haven’t seen much mention of it, anywhere. On Friday, some 80 people were arrested at the Supreme Court during a protest calling for the U.S. government to shut down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

An Asheville man was one of those arrested.

The Associated Press said:

Demonstrators wearing orange jumpsuits intended to simulate prison garb were arrested inside and outside the building in the early afternoon. “Shut it down,” protesters chanted as others kneeled on the plaza in front of the court.

They were charged with violating an ordinance that prohibits demonstrations of any kind on court grounds. Those arrested inside the building also were charged under a provision that makes it a crime to give “a harangue or oration” in the Supreme Court building.

The Washington Post quoted our local guy. Here’s a snippet:

More than 24 hours after he was arrested while kneeling on the steps of the Supreme Court in an orange prisoner jumpsuit and a hood, Tim Nolan stood before a judge yesterday in D.C. Superior Court Room 202 and said the word he’d come to Washington to say:

“Fazaldad.”

Nolan, of Asheville, N.C., was one of 75 people arrested Friday — the sixth anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison — for illegally protesting at the Supreme Court. Sixty-seven members of the group were held until late yesterday, most because they wouldn’t give their real names and instead identified themselves by the names of Guantanamo detainees.

As the protesters were led, one after the other, before Judge Robert I. Richter to be charged, all stated their real names and added, “I am here on behalf of . . .” — then named one of the 275 suspected terrorists held at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Mixed among more routine cases such as simple assault and prostitution, the detainees’ names were on the arraignment schedule tacked up in the court basement near the cafeteria, all charged with “displaying banner on the Supreme Court” and “speech at the Supreme Court” — essentially illegally protesting on court grounds.

“Even if it’s symbolic, it’s incredibly important, because these names are finally being heard in a courtroom,” said Mark Goldstone, an attorney for Witness Against Torture, the group that organized the protest.

…

“Guantanamo is so striking in its immorality and lack of justice,” said Nolan, who participated in a similar protest for last year’s rally — representing the same man, 26-year-old Fazaldad, whose first name is listed as “unknown” on Defense Department lists. “If humans were created in God’s image, torture is clearly a defilement of that.”

The Supreme Court protest was among dozens held around the world Friday.