Excerpt from The Washington Post
George Washington University students arrested in the spring for protesting the US-backed genocide in Gaza are being subject to punitive and retaliatory prosecution and highly irregular restrictions on their educations. In addition to being prosecuted in DC for nonviolent protest offenses, where such charges are routinely dropped, they are being told that to have their cases resolved they must accept a deal that includes a stay away order severely restricting their access to their own campus.
“Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a constitutional rights lawyer who has represented protesters in the city for decades, said it’s typical for prosecutors not to pursue charges for minor offenses or offer stay away orders that are narrower than the proposed restrictions for the GWU students.”
“These prosecutions are just so outside the normal practice regarding protest arrests, that they demonstrate that they’re politically motivated and intended to silence and retaliate against students because they advocated against genocide in Gaza,” said Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a nonprofit whose co-founder is representing one of the GWU students. “This is certainly intended to have a chilling effect.”