Antiwar/sanctions group chooses to go to jail over paying fine

[Terran1212]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0818-07.htm

Published on Thursday, August 18, 2005 by Reuters
U.S. Anti-War Group Won't Pay Iraq Sanctions Fine
by Abid Aslam

CHICAGO - U.S. peace activists faced with a $20,000 fine for violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq seven years ago for delivering medical supplies said on Tuesday they will go to jail before paying the fine.



We will go openly and lovingly to jail.

Kathy Kelly, co-founder, Voices in the Wilderness
"For 15 years our government has waged economic and military warfare against the people of Iraq," Jeff Leys, a coordinator for the group, Voices in the Wilderness, told a press conference here. "We will not comply, we will not collaborate."

On Friday, a federal judge ordered the organization, one of the largest American anti-embargo groups in the 1990s, to pay a $20,000 fine imposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2002.

The fine was issued by the government after group members carried medicines and medical supplies to Iraq in 1998 without asking for a license to export humanitarian supplies.

The Chicago-based group was one of many U.S. and European organizations