firedoglake | Six students from the City University of New York were charged with
multiple offenses on Wednesday night after being arrested while
protesting the university’s hiring of former CIA director and
ex-general, David Petraeus, who had a key role in secret detention and torture centers setup by Iraqi security forces.
The criminal complaint filed against the students indicates they were
charged with disorderly conduct, riot, resisting arrest and obstruction
of governmental administration.
The students arrested are Augustin Castro, Jose Disla, Denise Ford,
Luis Henriquez, Angelica Hernandez and Rafael Pena. They were arraigned
in Manhattan Criminal Court and appeared with Lamis Deek, a lawyer from
the National Lawyers Guild who is representing them.
According to New York law, “A person is guilty of disorderly conduct
when, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or
recklessly causing risk” that person “engages in fighting or in violent,
tumultuous or threatening behavior” or “makes unreasonable noise.” A
person can also face this charge if he or she “uses abusive or obscene
language or makes an obscene gesture” or, “without lawful authority,”
disturbs “any lawful assembly or meeting of persons.”
One can face charges of “riot” if they engage in “tumultuous” behavior intended to “create public alarm.”
Obstruction of governmental administration charges are committed
under the state’s law when someone “intentionally obstructs, impairs or
perverts the administration of law or other governmental function or
prevents or attempts to prevent a public servant from performing an
official function by means of intimidation, physical force or
interference.”
The students were arrested while Petraeus was attending a CUNY
Macaulay Honors College fundraiser. They were outside picketing on a
public sidewalk, and, due to the size of the protest, the street. They
were in jail for over twenty hours before finally being arraigned.
Faculty and staff from CUNY and other universities in the US signed
on to a statement expressing “outrage at the violent and unprovoked
actions by the NYPD against CUNY students peacefully protesting at the
appointment of war criminal David Petraeus as a lecturer at the Macaulay
Honors College.”
“We deplore the use of violence and brutal tactics against CUNY
students and faculty who were protesting outside the college. It is
unacceptable for the university to allow the police to violently arrest
students,” the statement declared.
The statement further explained, “We emphatically support the efforts
of these CUNY students to resist the attempts by the U.S. government
and the CUNY administration to turn the university into an infamous “war
college” with the appointment of Petraeus. Petraeus is responsible for
countless deaths and innumerable destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan as a
war commander and chief of the CIA.”
The union condemned his support for a strike on Syria and said his
current role as “adjunct” lecturer at CUNY and professor at University
of Southern California indicates “increasing US military and state
security involvement within higher education.”
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