Columbus: Six arrested at SOA Watch rally

The group SOA Watch says six people have been arrested so far at Fort Benning, near Columbus where thousands have gathered to protest a school there that trains Latin American soldiers, police and government officials.

Hendrik Voss is communications director for SOA Watch, which seeks to close the school. He says the six were arrested shortly after 9 a.m. Sunday for coming onto the grounds of the military base.

Police said Sunday evening that the six all made bond and have been released.

Voss says 20,000 people attended the event, but police peg that number considerably lower at about 8,500.

The Army's School of the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced in 2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Protesters at the 2007 SOA Watch rally outside the gates of Fort Benning holding crosses and a doll symbolizing those killed in El Salvador in 1989. (Dave Bender/file)

The protests outside the base commemorate six Jesuit priests who were killed along with their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989. Some of the killers had attended the School of the Americas.

Click here for more GPB News coverage about SOA WAtch and Fort Benning.

(AP)