American activist Cindy
Sheehan makes the victory signal as she walks up stairs along with, from
right to left, Cuban Baptist minister Raul Suarez, Medea Benjamin, Tiffany
Burns, Adele Welty and Ann Wright after they arrived at the Jose Marti
airport in Havana, Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007. Cindy Sheehan, known as the
'peace mom', called for the closure of the US military prison in
Guantanamo, Cuba, several activists arrived to Cuba to draw attention to
the nearly 400 terror suspects still held at the remote site. [AP
Photo]
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Havana - American "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the US
military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived here
Saturday to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects held at the remote
site.
Sheehan is among 12 human rights and anti-war activists who will travel
across this Caribbean island next week, arriving at the main gate of the
Guantanamo base in eastern Cuba on Thursday, five years after the first
prisoners were flown in.
"Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not afraid of anything," Sheehan said
when asked about the possibility of US sanctions for traveling to Cuba, which
remains under an American trade embargo.
"What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating
at Guantanamo," she told reporters.
Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, Calif., became an anti-war activist known as the
"peace mom" after losing her 24-year-old son Casey in Iraq in April 2004.
She drew international attention after camping outside US President Bush's
Texas ranch to protest the war in Iraq, and has been arrested numerous times for
trespassing.
Sheehan arrived in Havana early Saturday evening with trip organizer Medea
Benjamin of the California nonprofit groups Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women
for Peace.
Benjamin said group members believed they were exempt from US travel
restrictions on Cuba because they were traveling as professional human rights
activists who will attend a daylong international conference in the Cuban city
of Guantanamo on Wednesday, the eve of their protest.
The US military still holds about 395 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida
or the Taliban, including about 85 who have been cleared to be released or
transferred to other countries.