Statement by Father Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J., about his fast

Today I begin an indefinite, liquids only fast as I start serving the prison sentence I received for walking onto Ft. Benning in protest against the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for SecurityCooperation on Nov. 23, 2003.

1. I AM FASTING AND PRAYING that the U.S. Congress will vote to close down SOA/WHISC in repudiation of its record of training Latin American dictators,
assassins, and torturers.

2. I AM FASTING AND PRAYING that the U.S. government, at SOA/WHISC and at other installations, will cease training, equipping, and strengthening the hand of the armed forces of Latin America, since such militarization is NOT the most urgent need of the poor of the continent and since it entails the
integration and control of Latin American forces in the service of U.S. military strategies, as in Iraq.

3. I AM FASTING AND PRAYING that U.S. and Latin American troops will be withdrawn from Iraq so that the Iraqi people can exercise true freedom and self determination in their own country; if the Iraqis choose to have the assistance of the U.N. and other international bodies in rebuilding their country, their decision should be honored.

4. I AM FASTING AND PRAYING that the U.S. government, especially the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Honduran government will release all information concerning Father James Guadalupe Carney, an American priest who disappeared in Honduras in 1983 after entering that country as a chaplain to an insurgent group, and that both governments will do everything possible to find his remains and to clarify the circumstances of his disappearance.

James Carney had received basic training at Ft. Benning before being sent to Europe during World War II. Some of the Honduran soldiers alleged to have been involved in his disappearance were SOA graduates.

5. I AM FASTING AND PRAYING that the U.S. government, especially the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Honduran government will release all information concerning the American citizen David Arturo Baez Cruz, who also disappeared in Honduras in 1983 in the same group with Father Carney, and that both governments will do everything possible to find his remains and to clarify the circumstances of his disappearance.

An investigation should be made of the statements of a retired U.S. Army Delta Force Sergeant Major who wrote in his autobiography ("Inside Delta Force The Story of America?s Elite Counterterrorist Unit," Delacorte Press, 2002) that he killed a Nicaraguan American in combat in Honduras, whom he later identified as Mr. Baez Cruz (see MIAMI HERALD,Sept. 3, 2003, "Ex Green Beret's Sandinista story emerges 20 years later,"
by Juan O. Tamayo).

Baez Cruz, a Nicaraguan by birth, had been a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces for 11 years before returning to Nicaragua and then entering Honduras.

In a radio talk show in Georgia in November, 2002, the former Delta Force Sergeant Major stated that Fr. Carney was killed, adding: "there was some talk, and I believe I had heard some evidence, that he did not die an easy death.... What I heard was that from the condition of his body, he was brutalized prior to his death, that the marks that were on his body had to have been inflicted while he was still alive."

About 50% of the material concerning Baez Cruz and Father Carney" declassified" by the U.S. government is blacked out. During this fast, as I pray to the God of justice and peace, I am also directing my requests to the appropriate governmental authorities.