A federal appeals court on Friday acquitted a Virginia scholar criminally convicted of urging Muslims to fight with terrorist forces overseas after the 9/11 attacks waged by radical Islamist terrorists.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Ali Al-Timimi’s 2001 statements were protected under the First Amendment and did not reach the criminal level of inciting lawless actions. The decision tosses a 2005 verdict from a jury that found Al-Timimi guilty of soliciting treason and urging a group of Muslims during private meetings to aid the Taliban in Afghanistan and fight following the attacks on the World Trade Center towers.
“Plenty of speech encouraging criminal activity is protected under the First Amendment,” Judge James A. Wynn wrote in an opinion for the three-judge panel that cited the Supreme Court’s 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio ruling. “The First Amendment’s protection does not depend on the popularity or palatability of the message conveyed. On the contrary, it is most vital when speech offends, disturbs, or challenges prevailing sensibilities.”
Al-Timimi’s legal team celebrated the decision, saying it reaffirmed “the government cannot criminalize speech simply because the ideas expressed are unpopular, offensive, or challenge those in power.”
“When courts refuse to allow convictions based merely on the expression of ideas — no matter how alarming those ideas may be to some — they vindicate the First Amendment’s core promise and demonstrate the strength of our system of government,” Federal Defender Geremy Kamens said.
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Wynn said that Al-Timimi’s “vague and general” statements to a group during a 2001 meeting at his home, exhorting attendees to support terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “fell short of advocating the imminent lawlessness contemplated by Brandenburg.” The statements were “disturbing and deeply offensive,” the judge wrote, but “urged no concrete criminal plan and did not provide operational assistance for the commission of any particular offense.”
Another court voided three of Al-Timimi’s convictions in 2024. But seven others had remained on appeal, leaving him with decades of prison time beyond the 15 years the Virginia lecturer had already served.