U.S. Anti-War Group Won't Pay Iraq Sanctions Fine

[FreedomAngel82]

I thought this was amazing.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0818-
07.htm


<August 18, 2005 by
U.S. Anti-War Group Won't Pay Iraq Sanctions Fine
by Abid Aslam

CHICAGO - U.S. peace activists faced with a $20,000 fine for
violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq seven years ago for delivering
medical supplies said on Tuesday they will go to jail before paying
the fine.

"For 15 years our government has waged economic and military warfare
against the people of Iraq," Jeff Leys, a coordinator for the group,
Voices in the Wilderness, told a press conference here. "We will not
comply, we will not collaborate."

On Friday, a federal judge ordered the organization, one of the
largest American anti-embargo groups in the 1990s, to pay a $20,000
fine imposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2002.

The fine was issued by the government after group members carried
medicines and medical supplies to Iraq in 1998 without asking for a
license to export humanitarian supplies.

The Chicago-based group was one of many U.S. and European
organizations that in the 1990s defied trade sanctions to deliver
medicines to Iraqi hospitals.

A Treasury spokeswoman on Tuesday declined to comment on the judge's
ruling. But she said the government will continue to file civil
charges against Americans who break U.S. law that puts sanctions on
other countries.>