Thousands gather for annual military school protest

COLUMBUS - Thousands of protesters will gather outside Fort Benning&#39;s main gate Sunday for the 13th annual protest against a military school they blame for human rights abuses in Latin American. <br> <br> Organized by School of the Americas Watch, the demonstration commemorates the November 16, 1989, killings in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests. Some of the killers had attended the Army&#39;s former School of the Americas, which moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984. <br> <br> The group&#39;s founder, Roy Bourgeois, said, ``Our president keeps saying we have to go after the training camps for terrorists wherever they are. We say a good place to start is right here in our backyard. We&#39;re going to have a lot of World War Two and Vietnam veterans who feel the school is giving Fort Benning a bad image. It brings shame upon our country.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> The demonstration is scheduled for Sunday, but many of the protesters arrived today for two days of workshops and religious services. <br> <br> Between six-thousand and seven-thousand protesters took part last year, including 31 who skirted around a fence to enter the post, carrying crosses and mock coffins to honor victims of Latin American violence. Twenty-eight pleaded guilty or were found guilty of trespassing and some of those are still serving six-month sentences. <br> <br> SOA Watch was in federal court today, attempting to block the city&#39;s plans to use metal detectors for the first time to check demonstrators. The group contends the security checks would violate their constitutional right to assemble. <br> <br> U.S. District Judge Clay Land ruled in favor of the city, rejecting the SOA Watch claims that the searches ran counter to the First and 14th Amendments. <br> <br> Police officials said officers would encircle the protest site, forming 10 entry points where the metal detecting wands would be used. They said the wands would be set on a level that would detect guns, large knives and other weapons but not inconvenience those who just had keys or other small items on them.