Those indicted said that their behavior was caused by the resentment and bitterness that had accumulated from the decades of suffering due to the Navy's bombing practices on the island. Norma Burgos, a Senator of Puerto Rico, who had formerly been imprisoned for trespassing on the bombing range several months earlier, justified the behavior by comparing it to the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in the recent invasion of Iraq — in which U.S. soldiers used an Army tank (a property of the U.S. government) to tear it down. Their defense failed, and more than a dozen of those charged were imprisoned for ""damages and destruction of public property.""