Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan on trial – Americas – International Herald Tribune
EW YORK: An employee of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, the sister of former U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, testified Thursday that she canceled a meeting with a women’s group last March when she saw prominent anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and several reporters among them.

Sheehan and three other women face charges of disorderly conduct, obstructing government administration, trespass and resisting arrest after sitting in front of the U.S. mission and ignoring orders to leave. They each face up to a year in prison if convicted.

The women said they wanted to deliver an anti-war petition with 70,000-plus signatures.

Peggy Kerry, the mission’s liaison for non-governmental organizations, said she had arranged to meet the group but later felt she had been misled about the meeting’s purpose.
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“I was angry that they had not told me Cindy Sheehan would be there,” Kerry said. “(Her presence) explained to me why there was a gaggle of press outside.”

Sheehan became an energetic opponent of the war in Iraq after losing her son there in 2004. She gained international fame when she and others camped outside U.S. President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch.

Defense lawyers said the women, part of an anti-war campaign called Women Say No to War, did nothing illegal. They said the women had a right to take a petition to the mission and had a right to be on the public plaza in front of the building where they were arrested.