SANTA ANA, Calif. — A jury on Friday convicted 10 Muslim students of disrupting a talk by the Israeli ambassador on a university campus in a case that has stoked a debate about free speech.
The jury also convicted the students of conspiring to disrupt Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech in February 2010 at the University of California, Irvine. They were charged with misdemeanor counts after standing up, one by one, and shouting prepared statements such as “propagating murder is not an expression of free speech.”
Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter J. Wilson sentenced the defendants to 56 hours of community service and three years of informal probation. The judge found that the incident did not merit jail time and added that the probation period would be reduced to one year if the community service is completed by the end of January.
A coalition of Muslim and Christian community leaders denounced the verdict. Shakeel Syed of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California said he was shocked: “This is yet another reaffirmation that Islamophobia is intensely and extensively alive and thriving in Orange County.”
