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LEAD-IN BY HOST DAVID STILES: The Bush administration is spending millions of dollars in its "war on terrorism" since the attacks of September 11, 2001, but local human rights activist, Kenneth Crowley is protesting against what he believes to be United States involvement in training terrorists. Valarie Torres reports:

STORY: Kenneth Crowley entered a federal prison camp Tuesday in Beaumont, Texas, to serve time for a class B criminal trespassing conviction. He will serve a six-month sentence on a charge stemming from participation in a mass protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas.

Located in Fort Benning, Georgia, the Institute is a military school funded by the Department of Defense. It was created to professionally educate military, law enforcement and civilian officials from Latin American countries.

Countries receiving training include El Salvador, Panama and Colombia.

The school is also known as the alma mater of 19 of the 26 Salvadorian officers implicated in the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, and as the school that trained former military dictator General Manuel Noriega.

Crowley has been protesting against the training of the School of the Americas because of the known atrocities committed by its graduates.

"I was thinking specifically about a man I met in Colombia last year when I went there with a delegation -- a delegation from Witness for Peace and School of the Americas Watch -- a man named Hector Mandragon, who is a human rights worker, unionist and really an intellectual and professor at a university, who had been arrested some seven times. During one of those arrests he was actually tortured by a graduate of the SOA, and as he said recently, he forgave the man immediately, but he could never really reconcile the action for his life, until a place, the SOA of course that taught this man, until we close the place that taught this man to leave him trembling, and to be in his presence you immediately recognize that his hands tremble, his voice trembles from the torture that he experienced in Colombia."

The United States Department of Defense says the school provides education and training in the promotion of democracy in Latin America. But Colombia Program Director for the human rights organization Global Exchange, Sandra Alvarez describes the Institute as instead providing tools to oppress the people of Colombia.

"As many people know, but not enough, what I'll just keep calling the SOA, or formerly known as the School of the Americas, has trained over ten thousand Colombian soldiers and officials of Colombia's military. In 1996, because of pressure from citizens here in this country, manuals that are used in the trainings were released and they were showing that they were teaching torture and extortion and targeting of trade unions and other human rights activists."

Crowley and thousand of others attempted to call attention to the topics being taught at the Institute by purposely trespassing on the army base it is located. He was tried along with 43 others, who are now serving three to six months for this non-violent civil disobedience action. Crowley:

"During our trial one of our witnesses was Major Joe Blair, who taught the courses that are offered at the School of the Americas. Not only at the School of the Americas, but prior to that during Vietnam, and the course was basically the same he said, and it was clear it included methods of torture, in those days and as we know now because the Congress forced the school, the Department of Defense to reveal that they actually had torture manuals, part of the manuals included methods of torture back in 1996, so we know that was true."

The School was closed in December 2000, and re-opened in January 2001 under its new name. While opponents of the school say the new name has not resulted in a curriculum change, Public Affairs officer at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, Lee Rials, argues the school now has a significant focus on human rights:

"One of the requirements that we have in the law that created this institute is at least eight hours of human rights instruction in every course that is given here. So the courses that are only say, three weeks or six weeks, maybe might get only eight hours. But the longer courses get all the way up to a whole human rights week."

Valarie Torres, KPFT News, Houston.

E-mail Valarie Torres at vlady_76@hotmail.com.