(BUMPED ONCE - MUST READ)

Here's some red meat for your Memorial Day.

A blogger is being ordered by a Cease and Desist notice to take down a posting on his website that an offended Muslim. Pam at Atlas Shrugs has the lowdown, including a reproduction of the post from the offending website. For the original post, scroll down here to the story entitled "Tampa Used Car Dealer Tied to Islamic Jihad / US Federal Court Order."

The story is this (as reported by the blogger, who is a private investigator named Bill Warner):

The owner of a Tampa car dealership, Mr. Abdul Dabus, has allegedly been laundering money through the international sale of automobiles from his dealership (shipped to and sold in the Middle East) to support Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Mr. Dabus was for years an instructor at the Islamic Academy of Florida (IAF), which was barred from receiving taxpayer funded vouchers in 2003 after being named in a 50-count indictment as an American base of support for terrorist activities in the Middle East (particularly by PIJ). According to a 2005 court document, Mr. Dabus (who has a strangely suspicious working knowledge of terrorist leadership in the Palestinian territories) was called to testify in a trial against convicted terror supporter and IAF leader Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian pled guilty in March 2006 to a count of supporting terrorism. He is currently serving a 57-month sentence and will be deported from the United States.

The Tampa Tribune published an article in October of 2005 with this interesting passage:

Dabus said he and Al-Arian had been friends for years but grew closer after he moved to Tampa in 1999 and took a job at a private school run by Al-Arian. He spoke succinctly and said he did not want to be in court. He said he was not a member of the Islamic Jihad but, as a Palestinian, supported those who fought Israeli occupation.

"This trial should be in Tel Aviv," he said, "not here."

Still, Dabus verified a number of code words prosecutors have said the defendants used in their conversations. Among them, "the guys" is a reference to Islamic Jihad members, "the interior" means the occupied territories and "Moussa's group" refers to rival terrorist group Hamas.

In order for defamation to stick, the allegations must be untrue and must be intentionally published with knowledge of their falsity. Should the 'defamatory statement' (not specified by Mr. Dabus, presenting a weakness in his case) be false, he in his capacity as a private individual would only have to prove negligence of the blogger to collect compensatory damages (punitive damages don't apply here, being that the information is not malicious or recklessly published with knowledge of falsity). There are also many defenses against a charge of defamation: truth, fair comment, opinion, privilege, good faith statements (made with reasonable expectation of their truth by the defendant, etc.)

In America, the burden of proof generally lies with the plaintiff, since that pesky little thing called the First Amendment has to be protected and outweighs a alleged terror supporter's right not to be offended by citing public documents showing his support for Islamic terrorism.

While Pam is correct to point out that this is an important case to watch for anti-Jihad bloggers, I think that Dabus is fighting an uphill battle here. Not only is he trying to silence a blogger via legal intimidation (which more often than not goes spectacularly bad for the censor), but the facts and history that are readily available to those who are willing to look for it are simply not on his side. Fweh. We'll see.

Keep your ears and eyes open for more stories like this, as this is likely going to be another test case for legal jihad against critics of terrorism.

If we're really lucky, we'll get a Cease and Desist order at the Jawa Report. We're not usually that lucky, but you never know.

Cross-posted at Mein BlogoVault.

Posted by: Good Lt. at 08:47 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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