Elliott Madison's house raided by Terrorism Task Force
Threat Level reports that a Pittsburgh G20 protester accused of employing tactics that the US State Department lauded in Tehran in June, has had his home raided.
Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September’s G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops — an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.This American writer not only works with the handicapped, he volunteered his time to help Hurricane Katrina victims.
A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison’s house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters — all purportedly evidence (.pdf) that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.
His lawyer, Martin Stolar, explains the rational for the charge in an interview at Democracy Now:
MARTIN STOLAR: Essentially, what Elliot is charged with is using the computer or the cell phone to put up an announcement that said that the police had issued an order to disperse. Having done that and having informed people that the police had issued the order, then it is claimed that that announcement hindered prosecution somehow by, I guess, having people avoid being arrested. It would seem to me that that is something that provides some benefit to the police department, in terms of saving them the expenditure of resources in processing people. But they’ve decided to criminalize that communication, or at least in their complaint that’s what they say, that the communication that said, “Hey, there’s been a dispersal order; everybody be aware of it,” somehow turns into a crime of hindering prosecution. The communication facility then, the cell phone or the computer that was used to post that message, becomes an instrument of the crime, and the use of that mass communication facility becomes, they claim under Pennsylvania law, a third crime.Don't the authorities have any common sense? If the American justice system behaves this mindlessly, who is to say the country has the smarts to catch a real terrorist? That is, if the authorities equate owning anarchist books and paraphernalia with terrorism, those charged with protecting the country must be quite inept, don't you think? Read more...
This is just unbelievable. It is the thinnest, silliest case that I’ve ever seen. It tends to criminalize support services for people who are involved in lawful protest activity. And it’s just shocking that somebody could be arrested for essentially walking next to somebody and saying, “Hey, don’t go down that street, because the police have issued an order to disperse. Stay away from there.” All of a sudden, essentially, that becomes the crime that Elliot and his co-defendant are charged with.
