Heeey! It’s John Ashcroft’s America!!
For several years, Javed Iqbal has operated a small company from a Brooklyn storefront and out of the garage at his Staten Island home that provides satellite programming for households, including sermons from Christian evangelists seeking worldwide exposure.
But this week, the budding entrepreneur’s house and storefront were raided by federal agents, and Mr. Iqbal was charged with providing customers services that included satellite broadcasts of a television station controlled by Hezbollah — a violation of federal law.
Yesterday, Mr. Iqbal was arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan and was ordered held in $250,000 bail. The Hezbollah station, Al Manar — or “the beacon” in Arabic — was designated a global terrorist entity by the United States Treasury Department in March of this year.
Is it a violation of federal law to watch Al Jazeera or read Iraqi newspapers, too?
That’s not all…
Another spokesman for Mr. Iqbal called the government’s charges ridiculous. “It’s like the government of Iran saying we’re going to ban The New York Times because we think of it as a terrorist outfit,” the spokesman, Farhan Memon, said before the hearing. “Or China trying to ban CNN.”
Civil libertarians also expressed alarm.
“It appears that the statute under which Mr. Iqbal is being prosecuted includes a First Amendment exemption that prevents the government from punishing people for importing news communications,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Such an exemption is constitutionally necessary, and the fact that the government is proceeding with the prosecution in spite of it raises serious questions about how free our marketplace of idea is.”
August 25th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Maybe you should stick to harrassing cab drivers and leave the real lawyering to Instapundit HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Just kidding. I wondered about this, too. But I skipped out on the last two minutes of my senior year in college, so I didn’t feel qualified enough to discuss it.
August 25th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Eh, Reagan, Bush…what’s the diff? It’s all Ashcroft’s fault.
August 25th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
First amendment questions aside, this reaffirmed my disgust at local news coverage. WB11 coverage was like, “Hi neighbor, did you know Iqbal is a terrorist?” “Oh gosh, but he’s such a nice guy.” AAARGH!