Published: Monday, September 20, 2010, 10:13 AM Updated: Monday, September 20, 2010, 10:13 AM
Jonathan Oosting | MLive.com Jonathan Oosting | MLive.com
Four Christian missionaries arrested in June at the Dearborn Arab International Festival are heading to trial today after a judge denied a motion to dismiss the case.
Attorneys for the evangelists, who are part of a group known as “Act 17 Apologetics,” say their clients were attempting to engage Muslims in a dialogue about their faith.
But critics argue the suspects hoped to cause a scene at the festival, and Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad explained they were arrested for disorderly conduct to ensure they did not provoke violence from other attendees.
Defense attorney Robert Muise of the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center sought to dismiss the case on the grounds the arrests were unconstitutional — an argument law professors say has merit — but the Detroit Free Press reports 19th District Court Judge Mark Somers on Friday denied the request.
“I think the evidence will show they did absolutely nothing wrong,” Muise told the newspaper, explaining he’s confident his clients will prevail at trial.
The case is being watched closely by First Amendment scholars and political pundits
THank you very much for posting this – I am not Christian but I am following this case. I have seen the videos and I believe that they were arrested for talking about Christianity in a muslim state.
Arab muslim immigration to Michigan has a long steady history.
Arab muslims are the most dangerous immigrant group I can think of.
Aside from what I see as selective law enforcement, I ask were there civil rights violations by the police and security guards? I hope this aspect is being explored . There is nothing like a municipality having to pay out a hefty fine to get their attention.
The process is the punishment, this happens too often to be a coincidence, in the uk too. You get to go to trial, engage lawyer, have all the expense and hassle, and then it gets thrown out of court, or you win. You have limited time, limited money, and have to live with the hassle and nagging fear. The state has limitless money, time and there’s no personal comeback.
The idea is to intimidate and discourage the citizen.
The people bringing this prosecution should be proud of themselves they are acting just like an Arab/Muslim dictatorship would.
Every case like this is the shape of things to come.
Just what faith is Ron Haddad?
Looks like the TEA Parties have another cause to fight for, this is a clear violation of the First Amendment. The town and the individual Policemen should be made to pay heavy fines for their criminal actions.
“suspects hoped to cause a scene at the festival” and “disorderly conduct to ensure they did not provoke violence” wow so the police can arrest for crimes that might occur in the future like that movie “minority report”.
What ever happened to “proof beyond all reasonable doubt”.Are the police going to bring a psychic medium in as the prosecution for evidence that ” could” have occurred or “intentions” that “might” have been considered.
The whole trial is in virtual reality.They could make a movie in O`bama-vision. Funded by those nice al-Jazeera people.
Every day of the year, in countless cities across the free world, protesters of every stripe have been pulling off way worse stuff than this for decades, then some white Christians decide to do an incredibly polite version of the same thing in Dearborn, and they get arrested and charged. This is a glaring injustice! If the same people who vote on American Idol knew about this, do you think they’d vote to have the Christians arrested while every other type of protester gets off Scott free on the first amendment? Not likely. But they don’t know about this kind of stuff, do they. Our mainstream media is worse than Pravda, or Tass ever were. Any Russian with half a brain in his head knew that their papers were full of lies, but most of us in the West are oblivious to the manipulations of our media. We watch our groomed, polished news teams at work and actually think they’re reporting the news. Isn’t Christiane Amanpour convincing? It never occurs to us that they are looking us strait in the eye and lying. Dr Goebbels would never lie to us! The media is like Sky Net in the Terminator, a computerized defense system that suddenly became self-aware and declared war on the human race. Are you Sarah Connor?
Violence works!