U.S. May Fine Some Who Shielded Iraq Sites yan Clancy arrived in Iraq in February in a double-decker bus filled with opponents of the war, after a rocky journey in it all the way from Milan. He had used frequent flier miles to get to Italy from Wisconsin. "There weren't a lot of Milwaukee-Baghdad flights," he explained. Mr. Clancy is 26 and owns a record store. He went to Iraq, he said, to observe, to learn and "to protect the civilian infrastructure." He spent weeks as a human shield at a grain silo that he feared would be the target of American bombing. The government is not happy with Mr. Clancy and several others like him. Not long after they returned home this spring, they received letters from the Treasury Department seeking information about their activities in Iraq and noting that spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000. Mr. Clancy and other opponents of the war say the inquiries are part of an effort to suppress dissent, but the government says they are a routine enforcement of regulations. And a Treasury spokesman bristled at the notion that the inquiries were politically motivated. "Of course not," the spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said. "Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein � where dissent was met with imprisonment or worse � the freedom to protest and disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy. However, the right to free speech is not a license to violate U.S. or international sanctions. While free expression is a right enjoyed by all Americans, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone." Several hundred people calling themselves human shields camped at oil refineries, water treatment plants, electricity generating stations and similar sites during the war. Many were from Europe; about 20 were American. Several people involved in the effort said that none of the sites were attacked while human shields were present. "That tells me we were successful," said Judith Karpova, a 58-year-old writer in Hoboken, N.J., who placed herself at an oil refinery near Baghdad. "We went there to protect innocent civilians, and I went there to protect my own country against further crimes against humanity and war crimes." The government seeks to punish Ms. Karpova and others not for hurting the war effort but for financial transactions in Iraq. The transactions were not large. Mr. Clancy said he took $1,500 with him, gave much of it away and spent the rest on necessities. Ms. Karpova said her expenses were paid by her hosts. She did admit, in a recent letter to the Treasury Department, to importing "eight sets of coloring books and eight sets of color markers, which I left at the children's hospital in Baghdad." Faith Fippinger, a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher in Sarasota, Fla., wrote to the government that she bought rice, eggs and dates in Iraq. "I purchased an occasional glass of delicious, sweet Iraqi tea at tea stalls and tasty kebobs or chicken at food stalls," Ms. Fippinger added. "I have no receipts." Others said the travel restrictions had been misused in the past. "The main problem has been selective prosecution," said Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale and a State Department official in the Clinton administration. "Presumably others went to Iraq who did not disapprove of the war, and that gets into tricky constitutional ground." Mr. Griffin, the Treasury spokesman, rejected the premise of Professor Koh's comment. "We're going to enforce U.S. law without regard to the person's motivation for breaking it," he said. Mr. Clancy said the main point was a simple one. "I'm being prosecuted for dissenting and for going to meet the people we were supposedly going to liberate," he said. In July, the government sued Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago group that has delivered medicine to Iraq since 1996 in violation of the regulations, which allow humanitarian aid but only by those granted a license. The suit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia. The government seeks to collect $20,000 in fines, which were imposed last year for conduct in 1998. "The timing of it is very questionable," said the group's lawyer, William P. Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. "If it's not just bureaucratic, it's a very serious effort by the government to punish people for following their convictions." I'll believe the government position when they fine reporters for spending money on hotels in Baghdad. A.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/politics/14SHIE.html