Anti-torture activists plan to visit the northern Virginia homes of CIA Director John Brennan and former Vice President Dick Cheney Saturday, where they hope to perform “citizen’s arrests” on men they consider war criminals.

The advocacy groups Witness Against Torture and Code Pink are organizing the protest, which organizers believe will draw between 30 and 60 people, some dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods in opposition to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Many activists are in town for the 13th anniversary of the detention camp’s 2002 opening, which the groups believe will bolster participation.

“We’re going to have a big set of handcuffs with us,” says Code Pink coordinator Alli McCracken, who was arrested in February 2013 protesting at Brennan’s Senate confirmation hearing.



“Any time when we see any of these war criminals we try to perform a citizen’s arrest, even if it’s just a verbal condemnation, but we’ll have the handcuffs ready,” she says.

McCracken says she previously attended a protest against CIA drone strikes at Brennan’s Herndon, Virginia, home. He did not answer the door, so she left a letter on his porch, she says.

Protesters have scouted out Cheney’s home in McLean, Virginia, McCracken says, and noticed its long driveway is guarded by a gate, making an in-person encounter with Cheney less likely.

There are currently 127 detainees at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison, according to The New York Times, including people who underwent “rectal feeding” and waterboarding in CIA custody before arriving at the Caribbean facility.



Brennan, an official in the Bush administration, defended last month the potential utility of brutal interrogations after 9/11 - in response to the partial release of a Senate report on alleged torture - and denied the report's finding that the CIA misled elected leaders. Cheney offered similar pushback.

President Barack Obama has closed the door to prosecuting officials and interrogators who participated in the alleged torture of terrorism suspects, but says he supports closing the prison camp, which opponents characterize as a present-day gulag where prisoners languish without trial.



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Many leaders in Congress vehemently oppose closing the camp, but inmates have slowly been relocated to other countries during Obama’s presidency.