NEW YORK -- John Kerry's sister, an employee of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, testified Thursday that she canceled a meeting with a group of women last March after she saw peace activist Cindy Sheehan and news media with them.
The former Democratic presidential candidate's sister, Peggy Kerry, said she went outside and saw about 100 women, including Sheehan, and "a gaggle of press." She said she went back inside the mission.
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The women, organized by a group called Global Exchange, said they wanted to deliver an anti-war petition with 70,000-plus signatures. Police arrested four of them, including Sheehan, after they sat in front of the mission and ignored orders to leave.
Kerry was testifying in Manhattan Criminal Court, where the four are on trial on charges of disorderly conduct, obstructing government administration, trespass and resisting arrest. Each faces up to a year in jail if convicted.
The defendants are Sheehan, 49, of Vaccaville, Calif.; Melissa Beattie, 57, of New York City; Susan "Medea" Benjamin, 54, of San Francisco; and Patricia Ackerman, 48, of Nyack, N.Y.
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Kerry replied loudly: "I said I was angry at the fact that Reverend Ackerman did not tell me in good faith who was going to be at the meeting and I thought that as a minister that was hardly the thing."
Kerry's manager, Richard Grenell, the director of communications, testified after Kerry that he agreed to accept the women's petition and speak to some of them in his office, but "I wasn't going to do it in front of the media cameras."
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