Local group joins rally at military base

11/18/2006

Northwest Ohio residents are in Fort Benning, Ga., this weekend to join a rally to protest a U.S.-run military school for Latin Americans, some of whose graduates they claim later committed human rights abuses, including murder.

They demand the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, formerly known as the School of the Americas. Critics allege the school's graduates have committed murder, rape, and torture, including the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989.

About 30 people each from Bowling Green State University and St. John's Jesuit High School traveled on a bus to the rally. In addition, seven members of the Toledo Area Committee on Central America traveled by van and others by plane to attend.

Groups from northwest Ohio began making the annual pilgrimage in 1998.