Following a nearly three-hour hearing held yesterday
in Dallas, Texas, newly appointed District Court Judge Maricela
Moore dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Mohamed Mohamed on
his own behalf and on behalf of his 15-year old son, Ahmed Mohamed.
Ahmed
is better known as “Clock Boy” for bringing a hoax clock bomb to
his Irvine, Texas middle school in September 2015 and causing a
bomb scare that led to his arrest and suspension from school.
The
American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed the motion to dismiss,
along with local counsel Pete Rowe, on behalf of the
Center for Security Policy (“CSP”) and Jim Hanson, two of the
defendants in the defamation case, which also named as defendants
the local Fox affiliate, Glenn Beck, and Beck’s production company.
Mohamed
had sued Hanson and CSP for statements Hanson had made on Beck’s
program about the connection between the Clock Boy hoax bomb
affair, the attendant media frenzy created in large part by his
father Mohamed, civilization jihad, and the Counsel on American-Islamic
Relations (“CAIR”), the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in the
United States that promotes civilization jihad.
During
the hearing, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel David Yerushalmi
explained to Judge Moore that the purpose of the lawfare-driven
lawsuit was to intimidate into silence those who might comment
publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and
Islam. As such, Yerushalmi argued,
“This
case is a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or
‘SLAPP’ case and should be dismissed.”
During
the lengthy hearing, Judge Moore pressed Mohamed’s lawyer, Fort
Worth attorney Susan Hutchison, to provide any facts that would
suggest that Hanson and the other defendants had said anything
false or defamatory about Mohamed or his son during the television
broadcasts.
After spending a painfully embarrassing 15 minutes flipping through
reams of paper, Mohamed’s lawyer was unable to provide any such
evidence.
At
the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Moore took the matter under
advisement but informed the parties that she would rule by the end
of the day. Today, the Court published Judge Moore’s ruling
dismissing the lawsuit against Hanson and CSP with prejudice.
Upon
leaving the courtroom, Yerushalmi explained:
“This
lawsuit filed by Clock Boy’s father is yet another example of
Islamist lawfare, which is a component of the Muslim Brotherhood’s
civilization jihad.”
Yerushalmi
further explained that the purpose of such lawsuits, formally
labelled Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (“SLAPP”),
is to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on
the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and Islam.
Yerushalmi
added:
“The
Islamists employ the progressive mainstream media to label any public
criticism of a sharia-centric, jihad-driven Islam as
‘Islamophobic,’ and they add fear and financial ruin to the
equation by utilizing the legal system to file SLAPP actions,”
Now
that the lawsuit has been dismissed, AFLC will petition the court
for its legal fees and will seek sanctions against both the
plaintiff and his attorney.
Robert
Muise, AFLC’s other co-founder and senior counsel, made clear:
“AFLC
was formed in large measure to take on Islamists like CAIR who use
and abuse the legal system with their cynical form of lawfare to
undermine our constitutional liberties—notably free speech.
We have confronted these lawsuits across the country in federal and
state courts and have defeated CAIR and its minions at every
turn. When appropriate, we have won sanctions. This
lawsuit will be no different.”
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