American Views Abroad

 
An update on Blake Lemoine - a GI who served a year in Iraq before seeking conscientious objector status and now serving seven months in a stockade in Mannheim, Germany. A file of press reports on his case can be found on this page under Important Links -- Blake Lemoine in the News.

Lemoine began serving his sentence immediately on March 28th. His wife, Alayna Lemoine, tried repeatedly without success to visit him last weekend. She was informed by guards that he had not made out a visitors' list and 'he is not allowed visitors.' However, his military attorney had left a message on her answering machine claiming she is on the approved visitors' list. Further, Elsa Rassbach from American Voices Abroad Miliary Project received an email from Lemoine asking her to visit soon and adding she is on the list. When Rassbach called the prison on April 1st to confirm her planned visit, Sergeant Monte Boyd told her that no visitors' list had been made up by Lemoine and that no one would be allowed to visit him -- possibly for weeks -- because 'We don't know who you are.' He also told her no one is allowed to call Lemoine.

Immediately after speaking with Boyd, Rassbach called Bruce Anderson of the Army Public Affairs Office in Wiesbaden to express her concern. Anderson called her back to say that Lemoine's attorney had been contacted and would call Lemoine to give him instructions regarding the list. Anderson also told Rassbach that Alayna would definitely be allowed to visit on April 2-3, but that Rassbach and Lemoine's friends, including fellow soldiers and his sergeant on the Darmstadt base, would not be able to visit until they passed security checks.

Rassbach is very concerned. 'Blake has been on a hunger strike and needs to be examined by an indpendent physician and he needs legal conseling. We are worried that the Army may be trying to break his will and demoralize him because he has been so honest in talking about what he saw about US conduct in Iraq. It does not seem credible that he did not even put his wife on a visitors' list.'
- posted by Gloria @ 7:41 PM