A Jesuit priest, a Jesuit seminarian, a member of the Washington Community for Creative Non-Violence, and a member of Baltimore's Jonah House — led by the former Josephite priest Philip Berrigan — have been arrested and charged in connection with a blood-pouring incident on Good Friday at the Vietnam Overseas Procurement Office.
The accused are Fr Edward J. Murphy, SJ, and Debra Danielle, both members of Jonah House; Mike Bucci, a Jesuit seminarian of St Aloysius parish, Washington, and Mitch Snyder, a member of the Washington Community which is led by Fr Edward Guinan, of the Paulist Order.
The indictment charges them with destroying documents belonging to a foreign government and its officials, intimidating and obstructing the officials and burglary.
Just after the incident on Good Friday the four accused issued a statement charging the Vietnam Overseas Procurement Office with being "engaged in illegal activities, using funds appropriated for the purchase of food for starving Vietnamese to bolster the enormous defence budget of the Thieu regime." Mr Tran Kim Phoung, the Vietnamese Ambassador to Washington, said in a statement that the office was engaged only in commercial activities such as buying food. Mitch Snyder said the demonstrators had managed to take some files out of the building and would use them in their defence.