Camilo Mejia, Conscientious Objector A vigil was held Wed. June 23rd for Camilo Mejia, who is being held in the Fort Sill Regional Corrections Facility. Camilo is charged with being AWOL. As the article in the Lawton Constitution notes:

To the Army, Camilo Mejia is just a deserter.

But to his family and the supporters who held a vigil for him here Wednesday, the 28-year-old father is a "prisoner of conscience" who refused to return to Iraq for moral reasons.

The purpose of the vigil organized by the Oklahoma Committee for Conscientious Objectors was to advocate for official conscientious objector status for Mejia and for the commuting of his one-year sentence to time served.

According to Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, public affairs officer for 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga., former staff sergeant Camilo Mejia was considered absent without official leave (AWOL) as of Oct. 16, 2003, after he failed to return from two weeks' R&R. Mejia turned himself in to the custody of military authorities at Fort Stewart on March 17. Charges were preferred against him on March 24 by Fort Stewart's commanding general, Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr., court-martial convening authority.

Mejia was arraigned April 16, and his trial began May 19. He was tried by special court-martial under Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which covers desertion.

Mejia was ordered to serve one year in the Fort Sill Regional Corrections Facility, at the end of which he is to receive a bad conduct discharge (assuming the conscience objector packet and hearing does not change this part of the sentence). He was also reduced in rank from staff sergeant E-6 to private E-1 and ordered to forfeit two-thirds of his pay for 12 months.

The vigil was timed to coincide with a hearing on Mejia's application for conscientious objector status. Although the hearing took place on Fort Sill Wednesday, it was conducted by officials from Fort Stewart, according to Master Sgt. Tony McKinney, noncommissioned officer in charge of the Fort Sill Public Affairs Office.

As the vigil was ending shortly after 4 p.m., participants said the hearing was still going on and they had received no word as to the outcome.

"We haven't heard anything, and I'm not sure my office will," Kent said from Fort Stewart later Thursday.

For more information go to freecamilo.org

"Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience". Camilo Mejia

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