COLUMBUS, Ga. - More than a dozen people have been sentenced for trespassing at Fort Benning, Georgia, during an annual protest of a school that has been blamed for human rights abuses in Latin America.
Most of the 17 protesters sentenced yesterday in federal court in Columbus got penalties ranging from 60 to 90 days in prison and a 500-dollar fine.
Trials and plea hearings are scheduled to continue today.
Protesters gather each year at Fort Benning to call for the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation -- formerly known as the Army's School of the Americas. Critics say the school's graduates have committed murders, rapes and tortures in Latin America. Military officials deny the charges.
The protests are timed to coincide with the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. A congressional panel concluded that some of the killers were graduates of the School of the Americas.
The sprawling Army post is located near the Alabama line.
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