A judge ordered the release of nearly 500 protesters arrested during this week’s anti-GOP demonstrations just hours before President Bush accepted his party’s nomination Thursday night.
Legal advocates contended that the slow pace of releases–a trickle since nearly 1,200 arrests on Tuesday–amounted to an effort by New York authorities to quiet dissent during the president’s acceptance speech.
“They are prisoners because of their politics,” said Daniel Meyers, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild.
He spoke while standing outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse, where those arrested were being arraigned, many on disorderly conduct charges after participating in marches without permits.
Contending that individuals’ constitutional rights to due process have been suspended, Meyers said authorities were trying to establish a “sterile environment” for the Republican National Convention.
Deadline set for releases
State Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo fined the city $1,000 for every protester held past a 5 p.m. deadline he had set for their release. It was unclear how many detainees were still in custody, but Cataldo had ordered the release of 470 people.
“These people have already been the victims of a process,” Cataldo told the city’s top lawyer, referring to the detainees who had been in custody for 36 to 66 hours. “I can no longer accept your statement that you are trying to comply.”
At a later hearing, Cataldo determined that the city failed to comply with his release order and imposed his sanctions. City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo tried in vain to convince the judge of efforts to comply with his wishes.
“We can’t just open the jails of the city of New York and let everybody out,” Cardozo said. “We’re not trying to flout your honor’s order. … We’re doing everything humanly possible.”
Late Thursday, people were filing out of the detention facility. Some said they were headed toward a rally scheduled during Bush’s speech, while others were waiting for friends to be released.
According to Daniel Alterman, another attorney with the Lawyers Guild, some of the arrested protesters said police officers had told them that “they would not get out until George Bush goes home.”
The city had blamed the sheer volume of detainees for the backlog in getting them released. More than 1,700 protesters were taken into custody during the four-day convention and the preceding few days.
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Police officials denied assertions that the delays were politically motivated.
“The allegations that the NYPD was purposely holding demonstrators until after the president of the United States left New York City [were] part of a deliberate misinformation campaign,” Paul Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said in a statement.
System overwhelmed
In fact, some detainees suggested that the slow pace of releases was due less to politics than to the system being temporarily overwhelmed.
“There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when people were released,” said Christy Pardew, a spokeswoman for the School of the Americas Watch who was arrested during a march Tuesday. “There were people who were arrested after me who got out before me, and people I was arrested with who are still being held.”
Pardew said she pleaded not guilty to two charges of disorderly conduct and one charge of parading without a permit; she was given a court date in late October.
“To me, it seems more like bureaucratic inertia,” Pardew said.
Several hundred people were still in custody Thursday evening. Fifty-five of those detainees announced a hunger strike and were demanding the release of all those arrested at convention demonstrations, Pardew said.
The detainees included 16-year-old Benjamin Traslavina. His father, Nilson, was among family, friends and supporters of detainees who had gathered across the street from the courthouse in lower Manhattan, greeting those released with cheers.
Nilson Traslavina, 46, an engineer from Long Island, said his son had been participating in a “junior statesman” program sponsored by Princeton University in which he was observing the convention.
Benjamin was sitting behind a group of AIDS activists who disrupted a speech by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to young Republicans on the floor of Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.
Secret Service agents swept in and detained the demonstrators as well as Benjamin, who was videotaping the proceedings, according to his father.
That was about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. Since then, Traslavina has received two telephone calls from his son. “He was scared. He was tired. He said the conditions were terrible,” his father said. “But he assured me, `Dad, I didn’t do anything wrong.'”
The broad sweeps by police also caught up people who said they were tourists.
Sandra Zimmerle, 20, from Munich, Germany, said she had been held for 51 hours after being arrested along with a group of people marching from ground zero.
Zimmerle said she told police that she was simply sightseeing, but they arrested her anyway. “It’s like a bad movie,” she said. “I love the city. I have a very different opinion of the police.”