- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan.
Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington.
Legal experts say the case marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights. Afghanistan war veterans who know him say the case against Mavalwalla appears unjust.
That’s going to get thrown right the fuck out of court, not even the fascist judges will bother with that shit.
But he’ll be stuck in the jail system until that point, which is the real intent.
Doesn’t even matter if charges are filed, a couple days in jail fucking sucks. And it doesn’t just discourage the person in jail. It’s a message to every other potential protestor: “this could be you”.
But they can’t lockup everyone, their strategy only works if it gets protestors reduced to the amount they could imprison.
If they get the opposite reaction and more protestors, it backfires on them.
It doesn’t backfire if their goal is to find an excuse to kill a bunch of protesters.
I fear they are waiting for their Reichstag fire. On the other hand, IMHO the only way to deal with this is to get all Canadian with the White House…
US population outnumbers the military 342 to 1 (maybe 200 to 1 if not counting elderly and children), and the current administration keeps proving time and time again the military means fuck all to them. This is where Trump and his fucksticks are failing spectacularly. Previous dictators have bribed the shit out of their militaries to generate favor and compliance. Trump insults them, places them in dumbass situations, finds ways to screw them from pay, etc. The ICE funding was a way to create a private army of devotees. But a large portion of them are gravy seals, chucklefucks who think top score on COD will help them in actual battles. They got ran out of towns by bag toting grannies for fucks sake. At least, I tell myself this at night to sleep without living in constant fear of full out slavery and dogmatic oppression. And yes, I do realize that the civilian population has a large amount of support for him, but many of them will hipefully change their minds if it finally affects them.
EVEN JUST A FEW HOURS SUCKS. I know from experience.
Fuck the police. ACAB.
The whole time I was just worried about if I was gonna be deported, then I remembered my mother is a citizen so I also have derivative citizenship. But still, it triggered me so much, I was constantly ruminating/thinking about the alternate timelines where I got deported. Still think about it from time to time, heck, with the current ICE nazification, it can still happen right now. Police sirens scared the shit out of me, I could be just chilling playing a horror game, and then the siren blares through the neighborhood and I my heartrate goes even above being faced with monsters in a game (because the monsters in real life (aka: cops) are much scarier), I essentially go into fight or flight mode.
Like I had so many traumatic events throught my life, this unlawful arrest was the final nail in the coffin, I feel like I have permanent brian damage.
Parents have betrayed me, my brother has betrayed me, my country of birth betrayed me, now I’m in a different country and still dealing with authoritarian bullshit, like these corrupt pigs. Never felt like I have a safe place anywhere in this world, this world is hostile.
Yeah but did you read the person’s name?
How dare their parents name them that?! Now they have no option but to become a terrorist /s
He had so many chances in his life to change his name to Johnny Patriot, too.
And all his biometric and other data will be part of Palantir for use down the road when they start to claim “biomarkers that signal traitorous citizens” or some shit to round people up
Don’t count on it. They got the indictment which means enough jurors thought it more likely than not that he did it. Remember the charge is “conspiracy to impede or injure officers.” To prove this all they need is a social media post between protestors before the fact saying that they were going to block the drive way. That would, I suspect, constitute impeding the officers. This is a really stupid arrest, but unless some jurors just flat out refuse to convict, this guy could spend real time in jail.
A reminder that Grand Juries indict 99.99999% of the time. To the point where the multiple grand Juries that refused to indict the guy that threw the sandwich at ICE officers was actually newsworthy.
They aren’t there to determine whether it is likely someone did something, just whether the charges are even minimally plausible.
They also generally only hear what the prosecution wants them to hear. If you only hear one side of the story, then it’s easy to err on that side.
Regular juries asses whether the charges are “proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” Grand juries have a different standard of, “more likely than not.” The prosecutors in this case convinced enough of the grand jury that he 'more likely than not commuted the crime. Not sure how you meant “minimally plausible” but those are the standards the courts use.
deleted by creator
They’re not hand picked at all. They are randomly chosen. Source: was on one.
The standard for a grand jury is probable cause, not more likely than not. Civil court is preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not), and criminal is beyond a reasonable doubt.