CounterPunch
by Mike Ferner

11/22/05

"Sitting in a Georgia motel Saturday night, Kathy Kelly talked through a bad phone connection and a worse head cold to recount the previous day's activities where she and 13 others were arrested at an airstrip outside Raleigh, North Carolina. The tiny Johnson County Airport is home to Aero Contractors Corp., a firm described by the New York Times as 'a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service,' that shuttles prisoners abroad for interrogation and suspected torture. The Times reports Aero was founded in 1979 by the chief pilot for Air America, a CIA 'front' in Vietnam. In addition to Kelly, those arrested Friday included residents of a Raleigh Catholic Worker house and members of Stop Torture Now, a project of the Center for Theology and Social Analysis in St. Louis, Missouri. Protesters walked onto company property and lowered the flags to half-mast before being arrested. ... Kelly, a leader in the movement to stop the U.S. war on Iraq, said she got arrested because of a growing concern over the government 'becoming increasingly blatant about its role in torture. People need to stand up before it becomes more risky'...

http://www.counterpunch.org/ferner11222005.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp