The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, today sent a letter to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USAO-DC) calling on prosecutors to dismiss all charges against students arrested for peacefully protesting the Gaza genocide on George Washington University’s (GW) campus on May 8, 2024.
SEE: CAIR Letter Calling on US Attorney to Dismiss Charges Against Student Protesters
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) arrested 33 students on GW’s Foggy Bottom Campus. At 3 am, MPD raided the students’ encampment, which was erected in protest of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. During the raid, the students were arrested, and Islamic prayer mats and the Holy Quran were desecrated – discarded in trash cans along with their other belongings.
The USAO-DC has charged the majority of students with the misdemeanor offense of unlawful entry on property. Although the USAO-DC has recently offered these students a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, this does not go far enough. CAIR requested that the USAO-DC dismiss all charges against these student protesters and implored the Office to consider the ramifications of any prosecution, deferred or otherwise, against these students in light of the principles they called for, peace, dignity, and human rights.
In a statement, CAIR National Community Advocacy Director Nicole Fauster-Bradford said:
“The conditions of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement curtail the students’ educational experience. The agreement’s stay away order only permits students to attend classes and meet with professors. The students would be prohibited from entering GW dormitories, libraries, eateries, and the Student Center, where critical religious, cultural, and social resources are exclusively available.
“The value of attaining and paying for a costly college education extends beyond merely attending classes. Oftentimes, it is in these other campus spaces where students congregate to learn, grow, and intellectually challenge themselves and the ideas proliferating in the world around them, a task we as a society and GW as an institution have called on them to do at this time in their lives.
“These legal proceedings are part of a larger, nationwide trend to punish a generation of young conscientious objectors who only seek to call for justice against the U.S.–funded Israeli war crimes that have cost more than 38,000 Palestinians their lives within the past several months alone.
“As such, CAIR calls on the USOA-DC to reverse course, depart from this concerning trend, and dismiss all charges against the students who have stood firmly for justice.”
END
CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com