The "Lyrical Terrorist's" Debut Delayed by Prison Term
A few stories across the wire today on the legal limits of speech, both here and in Europe. First, from the good ol' USA, the case of anti-abortion extremist John Dunkle, a Reading, Pennsylvania "activist" who stands accused of suborning the murder of a local abortion provider on his blog. The AP reports on the verdict:
A federal judge ordered an anti-abortion activist to remove Web site postings that authorities said exhorted readers to kill an abortion provider by shooting her in the head. District Court Judge Thomas Golden granted an injunction Thursday seeking the removal of postings on Web pages maintained by John Dunkle. The injunction, sought by prosecutors in August, also bans him from publishing similar messages containing names, addresses or photographs of health clinic staff members.
Prosecutors said one posting targeted a former clinician for the Philadelphia Women's Center, and that she later stopped providing reproductive health services because she feared for her life. Dunkle, of Reading, said Thursday that the postings had been removed.
"They're down now," said Dunkle, who represented himself. "I won't put up language that (the judge) has told me not to put up." Authorities said the postings violate the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
In Dear Old Blighty, a court convicted Ms. Samina Malik, the Walt Whitman of al-Mujahiroun, for writing mellifluous poetry on the beheading of infidels. Malik, who worked at Heathrow (!), listed her favorite TV shows on a social networking site as"videos by my Muslim brothers in Iraq, yep the beheading ones, watching video messages by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri [his deputy] and other videos which show massacres of the kaffirs." The always reliable Daily Mail reports:
An airport worker who wrote poems about beheadings is the first woman to be found guilty under new terror laws. Samina Malik, who liked to call herself a "lyrical terrorist", called for attacks on the West and described "poisoned bullets" capable of killing an entire street in her poetry. The 23-year-old Muslim wrote of her desire to become a martyr and listed her favourite videos as the "beheading ones."
In another, How To Behead, she warned that the victim should be bound and blindfolded. Malik, who worked as a shop assistant airside in a branch of WHSmith at the airport, also owned an Al Qaeda encyclopaedia of Jihad, a Mujahideen poison handbook and a 'terrorist handbook' which explained how to make bombs. On the hard drive of her computer police found a copy of a sniper rifle manual, a firearms manual, anti-tank weaponry, a document entitled How To Win Hand To Hand Fighting, and pictures of weapons.
Outside the court, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: "Malik held violent extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people over the internet. "She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group. She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material which could have been useful to terrorists.
"Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence."
The Telegraph has more on the Malik verdict.