Dear friends,
please find below an excellent video of a radio interview with two of the members of the Irvine 11, who recently were found guilty on Septembr 23 of two misdemeanors for disrupting the speech of Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren. The students, stood up one by one stood up and interrupted Oren's speech and then peacefully walked out. The students, including one who had lost family during Israel's all out attack on the Gaza Strip in December/Januaray 2008/09 which killed up to 1400 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians, including 350 children, protested Oren's role as an Israeli spokesperson who defended the Israeli assault.
The students were members of the US Muslim Students Union but did not organise the protest under the name of the Muslim Student Union. However, UC Irvine’s administration disciplined the Muslim Student Union by suspending its charter for one quarter and placing it on probation for two years even though they maintains that they, as a group, did not organize the action.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas later decided to prosecute the students as a criminal matter, charging individual students with conspiring to commit a crime and for disturbing a meeting. The students faced up to a year in prison, but ended up being sentenced to 56 hours of community service, fines, and probation.
The video below is of one of the first interviews with students as a gag order had been placed on them preventing them from speaking out during the lead up to and during the trial. Two of the activists, Osama Shabaik and Taher Herzallah, spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar, the host of the Los Angles based radio program, Uprising.
I have also included an excellent article by Reem Salahi and Dan Stormer, two of the students defense attorneys, on motivation of the prosecution of the 11 activists. Salah and Stormer note that the motivation was political and discriminatory, noting that similar protests by non-Muslim students have not been prosecuted.
In the wake of the guilty verdict, the student's attorneys have announced that they will challenge/appeal the convictions.
In the wake of the guilty verdict, the student's attorneys have announced that they will challenge/appeal the convictions.
in solidarity,
Kim
***
Salahi & Stormer: ‘Irvine 11’ case motivated by politics, discrimination
If anyone questioned the motive behind the criminal prosecution of eight UC Irvine and three UC Riverside students, Tony Rackauckas's recent column in the Register leaves no doubt that it was politically and discriminatorily motivated. Now that the gag order has been lifted, Rackauckas's office desperately seeks to repaint itself in a sympathetic light following the tremendous outcry in Orange County and across the nation against the aggressive and unprecedented prosecution.
In Rackauckas's self-righteous rant, he conveniently ignores the time and hefty monetary resources expended in this vendetta prosecution. Similarly, Rackauckas is notably silent about the serious misconduct of his top attorneys and investigator who acquired and maintained privileged communications and used at least one attorney-client communication to bring charges against a student. As a consequence, three top district attorneys and the lead investigator were removed from the case weeks before trial. While Rackauckas espouses illogical claims about the First Amendment, he never mentions that his office undermined the students' Fifth Amendment rights to due process and against self-incrimination during its prosecution.
Rackauckas claims that this case is about the violation of the First Amendment, alleging that "The First Amendment rights of the 700-member audience were violated." Yet, even a first-year law student could tell us that only the government can violate one's First Amendment rights. Derivations of nonexistent rights and violations were made throughout this prosecution like one's right to emotional stability.
Rackauckas ends his column by stating that "this case needed prosecution." It is thus appropriate to highlight how this case was prosecuted.
Following the 11 students' arrests on Feb. 8, 2010, the students and the Muslim Student Union underwent protracted university administrative proceedings at both UC Irvine and UC Riverside which lasted up to eight months. Ultimately, the universities imposed sanctions against the students and the Muslim Student Union and UC Irvine publicly expressed satisfaction with its internal discipline.
Yet during that time, Rackauckas's office sent two investigators from the Special Prosecutions Unit who tried to intimidate students to testify against their peers. One student informed us that the investigator banged on his windows and door at 7 a.m. on Sunday yelling "Police, open up!"
Another student told us that the investigator went to her grandmother's house and accused her grandmother of hiding the student. That same investigator was subsequently seen talking to neighbors. These are but two of many accounts of students and community members who were bullied by Rackauckas's office. In fact, during this investigation, community members and interfaith leaders sent letters to the Orange County DA expressing concern over the investigation and the intimidation tactics being used. The response was essentially "butt out."
Between September 2010 and January 2011, the Orange County District Attorney's office issued five search warrants to obtain the private emails of the 11 defendants as well as other UC Irvine students. The warrants falsely indicated a felony investigation. At no point were the students or their attorneys informed about the search warrants prior to the filing of charges against the 11 students. In fact, after receiving the tens of thousands of emails obtained by the OCDA, defense attorney Reem Salahi discovered privileged communications between her and her clients. Subsequently, the court ruled that the OCDA had improperly possessed 20,000 pages of attorney-client and work product privileged communications. As a result of this misconduct, the court disqualified three top district attorneys and their lead investigator from the case. The OCDA immediately entered into an agreement to drop the charges against the 11th student in exchange for community service because they could no longer rely on the privileged communication which they had used in bringing charges against the student.
Then in January 2011, the district attorney issued eight grand jury subpoenas. Six students and two UC Irvine administrators were compelled to testify about the protest and the university administrative proceedings under threat of criminal contempt. Grand juries are almost exclusively empanelled in felony investigations, yet Rackauckas's office, again unprecedentedly, used the grand jury in this misdemeanor investigation. During the grand jury, one of the district attorneys admitted to a defense attorney that they resorted to use of the grand jury because some of the witnesses would not voluntarily testify. In other words, the DA used the grand jury in a misdemeanor investigation to intimidate witnesses and acquire information they would have otherwise been precluded from obtaining.
On Day 362 out of 365, the OCDA filed two charges against each of the 11 students, including the 11th student who was arrested as he was leaving the hall with dozens of other protestors. Rackauckas's office assigned the head of their homicide unit, Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner, to try this misdemeanor case.
During the prosecution, Rackauckas's office, and specifically his chief of staff, Susan Schroeder analogized these students to the Ku Klux Klan and intimated that they were anti-Semitic. Rackauckas's office issued a press release about the charges and published court documents as one of only six links on the OCDA website's homepage. In reviewing the OCDA's website, the authors were unable to locate other press releases or documents related to any other misdemeanor prosecution.
Now, Rackauckas's office is engaging in another libelous media campaign by further smearing the students and improperly trying their case in the media. In his column, Rackauckas selectively and unprecedentedly publicized a handful of emails (not the exculpatory ones) and highlighted comments made by unknown individuals. He also alleges incorrect facts specifically that the students shut down Israeli Ambassador Oren's talk. The reality is that the event did not start until 6 p.m. and the 10th and last student protested at approximately 6:25 p.m. During that time, Oren stepped off the stage for approximately 10 minutes. Following the last protest and a large walk-out, Oren completed his prepared remarks and had nearly 15 minutes to take questions and provide answers. Rather than engage in a Q&A session, Oren left early to attend the Lakers game at the Staples Center and meet with Kobe Bryant. It was Oren, therefore, and not the protesters, as Rackauckas claims, who cancelled the Q&A session and precluded the audience of the opportunity to ask questions.
The reality is that the protest occurred within a 15 minute window. The total time consumed by the student protest, including the clapping and walkout, was no longer than 7 minutes, well within the empirical average of dissent expressed at political assemblies and consistent with many other protests at both UC Irvine and other universities where protestors' disruptions of speeches last 5-10 minutes, if not longer. The only inconsistency has been the ensuing criminal prosecution.
If anyone has acted like organized thuggery, it is Rackauckas and his office. They preyed on the weakest and most vulnerable elements of society: youth, students and religious and ethnic minorities. They employed the mighty power of the state to obtain the private emails of the defendants and other students from Google, AOL and Hotmail and then compelled university administrators and students to testify before a grand jury. They maintained and relied upon privileged communications in violation of the law. In their aggressive prosecution, Rackauckas and his office acted in complete juxtaposition to the will of the universities and the local and national communities, as seen by the countless petitions, emails, editorials and columns. They have criminalized dissent based on its content and engaged in a racist and selective prosecution of students that chills our collective First Amendment protected activities. This prosecution has been an affront to the constitution and our concept of justice.
Reem Salahi and Dan Stormer are among the six defense attorneys representing the "Irvine 11" and are employed at the law firm Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick, LLP.
Rackauckas claims that this case is about the violation of the First Amendment, alleging that "The First Amendment rights of the 700-member audience were violated." Yet, even a first-year law student could tell us that only the government can violate one's First Amendment rights. Derivations of nonexistent rights and violations were made throughout this prosecution like one's right to emotional stability.
Rackauckas ends his column by stating that "this case needed prosecution." It is thus appropriate to highlight how this case was prosecuted.
Following the 11 students' arrests on Feb. 8, 2010, the students and the Muslim Student Union underwent protracted university administrative proceedings at both UC Irvine and UC Riverside which lasted up to eight months. Ultimately, the universities imposed sanctions against the students and the Muslim Student Union and UC Irvine publicly expressed satisfaction with its internal discipline.
Yet during that time, Rackauckas's office sent two investigators from the Special Prosecutions Unit who tried to intimidate students to testify against their peers. One student informed us that the investigator banged on his windows and door at 7 a.m. on Sunday yelling "Police, open up!"
Another student told us that the investigator went to her grandmother's house and accused her grandmother of hiding the student. That same investigator was subsequently seen talking to neighbors. These are but two of many accounts of students and community members who were bullied by Rackauckas's office. In fact, during this investigation, community members and interfaith leaders sent letters to the Orange County DA expressing concern over the investigation and the intimidation tactics being used. The response was essentially "butt out."
Between September 2010 and January 2011, the Orange County District Attorney's office issued five search warrants to obtain the private emails of the 11 defendants as well as other UC Irvine students. The warrants falsely indicated a felony investigation. At no point were the students or their attorneys informed about the search warrants prior to the filing of charges against the 11 students. In fact, after receiving the tens of thousands of emails obtained by the OCDA, defense attorney Reem Salahi discovered privileged communications between her and her clients. Subsequently, the court ruled that the OCDA had improperly possessed 20,000 pages of attorney-client and work product privileged communications. As a result of this misconduct, the court disqualified three top district attorneys and their lead investigator from the case. The OCDA immediately entered into an agreement to drop the charges against the 11th student in exchange for community service because they could no longer rely on the privileged communication which they had used in bringing charges against the student.
Then in January 2011, the district attorney issued eight grand jury subpoenas. Six students and two UC Irvine administrators were compelled to testify about the protest and the university administrative proceedings under threat of criminal contempt. Grand juries are almost exclusively empanelled in felony investigations, yet Rackauckas's office, again unprecedentedly, used the grand jury in this misdemeanor investigation. During the grand jury, one of the district attorneys admitted to a defense attorney that they resorted to use of the grand jury because some of the witnesses would not voluntarily testify. In other words, the DA used the grand jury in a misdemeanor investigation to intimidate witnesses and acquire information they would have otherwise been precluded from obtaining.
On Day 362 out of 365, the OCDA filed two charges against each of the 11 students, including the 11th student who was arrested as he was leaving the hall with dozens of other protestors. Rackauckas's office assigned the head of their homicide unit, Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner, to try this misdemeanor case.
During the prosecution, Rackauckas's office, and specifically his chief of staff, Susan Schroeder analogized these students to the Ku Klux Klan and intimated that they were anti-Semitic. Rackauckas's office issued a press release about the charges and published court documents as one of only six links on the OCDA website's homepage. In reviewing the OCDA's website, the authors were unable to locate other press releases or documents related to any other misdemeanor prosecution.
Now, Rackauckas's office is engaging in another libelous media campaign by further smearing the students and improperly trying their case in the media. In his column, Rackauckas selectively and unprecedentedly publicized a handful of emails (not the exculpatory ones) and highlighted comments made by unknown individuals. He also alleges incorrect facts specifically that the students shut down Israeli Ambassador Oren's talk. The reality is that the event did not start until 6 p.m. and the 10th and last student protested at approximately 6:25 p.m. During that time, Oren stepped off the stage for approximately 10 minutes. Following the last protest and a large walk-out, Oren completed his prepared remarks and had nearly 15 minutes to take questions and provide answers. Rather than engage in a Q&A session, Oren left early to attend the Lakers game at the Staples Center and meet with Kobe Bryant. It was Oren, therefore, and not the protesters, as Rackauckas claims, who cancelled the Q&A session and precluded the audience of the opportunity to ask questions.
The reality is that the protest occurred within a 15 minute window. The total time consumed by the student protest, including the clapping and walkout, was no longer than 7 minutes, well within the empirical average of dissent expressed at political assemblies and consistent with many other protests at both UC Irvine and other universities where protestors' disruptions of speeches last 5-10 minutes, if not longer. The only inconsistency has been the ensuing criminal prosecution.
If anyone has acted like organized thuggery, it is Rackauckas and his office. They preyed on the weakest and most vulnerable elements of society: youth, students and religious and ethnic minorities. They employed the mighty power of the state to obtain the private emails of the defendants and other students from Google, AOL and Hotmail and then compelled university administrators and students to testify before a grand jury. They maintained and relied upon privileged communications in violation of the law. In their aggressive prosecution, Rackauckas and his office acted in complete juxtaposition to the will of the universities and the local and national communities, as seen by the countless petitions, emails, editorials and columns. They have criminalized dissent based on its content and engaged in a racist and selective prosecution of students that chills our collective First Amendment protected activities. This prosecution has been an affront to the constitution and our concept of justice.
Reem Salahi and Dan Stormer are among the six defense attorneys representing the "Irvine 11" and are employed at the law firm Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick, LLP.
