Students, Activists Decry Boalt Professor’s War

About 15 UC Berkeley students and activists protested next to Boalt Hall yesterday, blaming Boalt professor John Yoo for a controversial prison torture memo which critics have said paved the way for mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib.

The protest, which was staged by The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!, a national organization, also aimed to inform students and community members about the torturing of war prisoners by U.S. soldiers during the Iraq war.

Reiko Redmonde, a member of the group, said the document written by Yoo, which said the Geneva conventions were not applicable to prisoners captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan, was the most shocking document to be leaked since the 1971 Pentagon Papers.

"There are practical implications of the torture inflicted upon prisoners of war," Redmonde said. "The pictures that are too horrible to print and see are made possible by Professor Yoo."

Yoo, a professor at Boalt since 1993, served as the deputy assistant attorney general during the Bush administration in the days following Sept. 11, and was also central in writing the USA PATRIOT Act.

Before the protest, a small group of students and group members entered Yoo's law class in Booth Auditorium, dressed as Abu Ghraib torture victims while being led by a man representing a U.S. soldier.

"We wanted to thank Yoo for giving the soldier the freedom to torture us," said senior Jason Curtis, one of the students who participated in the protest in Yoo's class.

Curtis said he was taken aback by the responses of Yoo's students.

"There's a lot of concern about the disruption of studies, but my own studies are being disrupted when I can't sleep because I dream about what the world is like," Curtis said.

After protesters entered Yoo's class, UC police issued at least two students notice of immediate exclusion citations, prohibiting them from setting foot onto any part of the property for seven days, said UC police Captain Mitch Celaya.

"There was no basis for the selection of people; we were picked randomly out of the crowd," said freshman Robert Alcantar, who said he was one of the students detained. "When I asked why this was happening, the officers said I'd be arrested for not following his orders."

But Celaya said no one was selected without sufficient evidence.

"I can't speak for what an individual officer may have said, but students in (Yoo's) class pointed out the people involved," Celaya said.

Celaya said the citations were dropped for the students in the group, who represented approximately half the people involved in the disturbance.

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