U.S. Arrests B.C. man who fled Marines in 1968

[Sportsdude]

[DIV class=storyheadline]U.S. arrests B.C. man who fled Marines in 1968[/DIV][TABLE width="100%" border=0][TBODY][TR][TD colSpan=2] [/TD][/TR][TR][TD colSpan=2][FONT class=storybyline]Darah Hansen[/FONT][/TD][/TR][TR][TD colSpan=2][FONT class=storypub]Vancouver Sun[/FONT][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE][DIV class=storydate]
Saturday, March 11, 2006[/DIV]
[DIV class=storytext][!--begin story text--]An East Kootenay man who deserted the U.S. Marine Corps almost 40 years ago is in a California military jail this weekend facing a possible court martial after he was arrested Thursday by U.S. border guards in Idaho on an outstanding warrant dating to 1968.

Allen Abney, 56, of Kingsgate, a small community about 25 minutes south of Creston, was travelling in the U.S. on holiday with his wife at the time of his arrest, his daughter Jessica said in a telephone interview Friday.

Abney, a Canadian citizen, had passed through the border countless times since he deserted the U.S. Marines in 1968, in opposition to the war in Vietnam, Jessica said.

On Thursday, however, he was detained by U.S. border guards after his name showed up on a federal database during a routine records check. He was held overnight by civilian authorities in Idaho before being transferred Friday to U.S. Marine Corps custody and sent to Camp Pendleton, Calif., where he now faces penalties under U.S. military law.

Jessica said the family is in shock over the situation.

"It's been so long since my dad left the military. Why have they suddenly decided to do this now?" she said in a press release issued Friday by the Canadian War Resisters Support Campaign.

"My dad is not a young man, so of course I'm worried about what's going to happen to him."

Born in Louisville, Ky., Abney came to Canada with his family in 1959, when he was 10 years old, Jessica said. He maintained dual citizenship, however, and, in 1968, enlisted in the U.S. Marines. Jessica said her father fled to Canada a few months later, along with thousands of draft-age American men who were opposed to the Vietnam war.

Jessica said Abney didn't return to live in the U.S. and crossed the border only on short trips.

In 1977 then-U.S. president Jimmy Carter signed a pardon for Vietnam draft dodgers and deserters, but the program required deserters to apply for the special discharge review program. Abney didn't apply.

On Friday, Lieut. Lawton King, a U.S. Marines spokesman at Camp Pendleton, said Abney's original arrest warrant was still active when he crossed the border.

"Thirty days after a service member deserts his unit, a federal warrant is issued and that warrant is outstanding from there on out," King said.

King said Abney will be returned to the same unit he deserted in 1968, where charges against him will be processed. "Ultimately, it's the unit commander who will determine the next course of action," he said.

King said details were not available Friday regarding Abney's former unit, including the identity of the current commander.

As for possible penalties, King said the commander may opt to convene a court martial, "then again, he may not."

"That decision rests in his hands," he said.

It's not the first time a U.S. military deserter has been arrested on decades-old charges.

In 2000, Richard Allen Shields, a truck driver from Castlegar, found himself behind bars in Washington state on an old warrant charging him with deserting the U.S. Army in 1972. Shields left at age 19 during training in Fairbanks, Alaska, following a one-year tour in Vietnam. The Eugene, Ore., native enlisted when he was 17 years old.

Like Abney, Shields didn't apply for a pardon through the special discharge review program.

Shields spent three weeks in jail -- first in a Washington county jail and then in a military barracks at Fort Sill, Okla. -- before winning a general discharge.

He urged other AWOL soldiers in Canada at the time to make sure they fill out all the necessary amnesty forms before attempting a border crossing.

Lee Zaslofsky of the War Resisters Support Campaign, which provides support for war resisters from the U.S., said Abney's arrest comes as the U.S. is cracks down on Iraq war deserters.

"They [the government] are using Mr. Abney as a sort of example of what could happen to them, and what they should be afraid of," said Zaslofsky. "Mr Abney does not deserve to be made an example of. Apparently, he is a fine person and a good citizen of Canada and we think that it is just vindictive, really."

[email protected]

[!--end story text--][/DIV][DIV class=storycredit align=center]© The Vancouver Sun 2006[/DIV]

[Sportsdude]

Geez George give up your stupid fight. [/DIV]This is absurd. Another rah-rah measure tactic enabled by the conservative government. Pathetic.

[soapbox]

actually it's about a random check that was intiated at the time he tired to cross the border.

his name has been in the database since 1968.

[perpetual]

I think this will give support to those men that fled to Canada rather than go to war in Iraq...it goes to show the idiocy of the USA with regards to its military...

[Sportsdude]

[H1]Canadian held for deserting U.S. marines in 1968[/H1][SPAN class=byline]Last Updated Sun, 12 Mar 2006 13:49:04 EST[/SPAN] [DIV class=text][A href="vny!://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html"]CBC News[/A][/DIV][DIV class=text]A B.C. man has spent the weekend detained at a military base in California after being arrested for deserting the U.S. Marine Corps four decades ago during the Vietnam War. Allen Abney, who was born in the United States but became a Canadian citizen in 1977, was arrested at a border crossing on Thursday while trying to enter Idaho from southeastern British Columbia.

[TABLE cellSpacing=4 cellPadding=0 width=180 align=right hspace="4"][TBODY][TR][TD align=middle][img height=158 hspace=3 src="vny!://www.cbc.ca/gfx/pix/abney_allen.jpg" width=180 border=0] [/TD][/TR][TR][TD align=middle][DIV class=caption][FONT face=verdana,arial size=1]Allen Abney[/FONT] [/DIV][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]Abney, 56, lives in Kingsgate in British Columbia's East Kootenay region, in a house about 100 metres from the Canada-U.S. border.

He and his wife were on their way for a holiday in Reno, Nev., when U.S. officials accused him of desertion and took him into custody.

In 1968, Abney was a 19-year-old marine when he fled to Canada because he didn't want to fight in Vietnam.

Charges on desertion can result in penalties ranging from a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. military to a court martial and possible jail sentence.

U.S. military 'not saying anything,' Abney's wife says

His wife, Adrienne, said Abney was being held in a military prison at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

But she said she had no idea what will happen next.

"They're not saying anything to him yet," she told CBC News.

"I talked to him twice on Friday, just very briefly. He's in the brig."

Arrest came during routine crossing

Abney's wife said the trouble began when their passports were checked during a routine border crossing.

"After running them through some computer, they said we'd have to come inside," she said.

"They took Alan away into a room and locked him up."

Then customs officials confiscated several of Abney's personal items, she said.

"They took his belt, his suspenders, shoes, his wallet, his glasses, everything."

Abney said her husband's case has come to the attention of Lynn Gonzalez, a counsellor with the San Diego Military Counseling Project.

The group's website explains that it offers support to "active duty folks and their families who are having problems within the military."

Abney said Gonzalez is keeping in touch with her about the case.

"She phoned me yesterday and said, basically he's all right." she said.

"We're just waiting to hear what they are going to do."

[/DIV]

[tenkani]

As a pacifist, I support his decision not to fight in an illegal and immoral war.

On the other hand, the Marines first landed in Danang in 1965.

What I don't understand is why someone who supposedly opposed the Vietnam war at the time would VOLUNTEER for the Marines in 1968 (at which point it was clear that we were involved in a difficult, bloody war) and then flee a few months later before being shipped off.

It just seems...odd.