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June 21, 2010 in Nation/World
High court upholds anti-terror law
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has upheld a federal law that bars “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting a free speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups.
The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.
Material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion.
“Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” Roberts said.
Justice Stephen Breyer took the unusual step of reading his dissent aloud in the courtroom. Breyer said he rejects the majority’s conclusion “that the Constitution permits the government to prosecute the plaintiffs criminally” for providing instruction and advice about the terror groups’ lawful political objectives. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.
The Obama administration said the “material support” law is one of its most important terror-fighting tools. It has been used about 150 times since Sept. 11, resulting in 75 convictions. Most of those cases involved money and other substantial support for terror groups.
Only a handful dealt with the kind of speech involved in the case decided Monday.
The aid groups involved had trained a group in Turkey on how to bring human rights complaints to the United Nations and assisted them in peace negotiations, but suspended the activities when the U.S. designated the Turkish outfit a terrorist organization in 1997. They also wanted give similar help to a group in Sri Lanka, but it, too, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1997.
Nearly four dozen organizations are on the State Department list, including al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Basque separatists in Spain and Maoist rebels in Peru.
The humanitarian groups, including the Humanitarian Law Project; Ralph Fertig, a civil rights lawyer; and Dr. Nagalingam Jeyalingam, a physician, want to offer assistance to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.
The government says the Kurdish rebel group, known as the PKK, has been involved in a violent insurgency that has claimed 22,000 lives. The Tamil Tigers waged a civil war for more than 30 years before their defeat last year.
© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Stocks plummet as outlook in Europe dims 
crikey on June 21 at 9:36 a.m.
Really???? H.R. 1388 was passed, behind our backs, but It wasn’t mentioned on the news… just went by on the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN screen.
nobama has ordered $20.3 million in “migration assistance” to Palestinian refugees and “conflict victims” in Gaza, and his ‘presidential determination,” allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas, to resettle in the United States. It was signed and appears in the Federal Register.
The order provides a free ticket replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election of January 2006.
Now we learn that he is allowing thousands of Palestinian refuges to move to, and live in, the US at American taxpayer expense. Soooooo, whattaya call that?
Another illegal move by his craziness…..
empyrius on June 21 at 10:06 a.m.
20 million to help Palestinians’ clean up Israel’s carnage, whlie Israel receives several billions of American dollars every year?!? Har har har har . . .
All Americans know about Gaza, and Hamas, is what Reuters, the AP, and Bloomberg news tell us about Gaza, and Hamas; and these afore respective “news” agencies keep to the western narrative quite religiously!
But please crikey, at least provide links to your plagiarism!
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/palestinians.asp
PlanB on June 21 at 10:19 a.m.
Stop blaming Obama for what the Bush administration started.
Scoutster on June 21 at 10:59 a.m.
crikey..
I call it the long-overdue and still poorly supported effort to make up for some of the excesses the Israeli state supported terrorists have put on the innocent people of Gaza with our money.
They have killed 10 times (that’s ten times) as many Palestinians as our theocratic client state has lost to Palestinians.
Not all are innocent, of course, but it’s hard to justify killing a baby by calling her a terrorist. Well, maybe not for the Israelis.
I call it a start.