US: 'Irvine 11' plan to appeal heckling conviction

A group of Muslim students who were convicted on 23 September of disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador at the University of California, Irvine, plan to appeal as Muslim community leaders call the high-profile free speech case a civil rights moment, writes David Finnigan for Huffington Post.

The 'Irvine 11' were charged with systematically heckling Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren during a speech to about 500 people last year at the university. "We'll be filing the notice of appeal within 30 days of the verdict," attorney Reem Salahi said last week. "Obviously there are issues that came up in the trial that we'd like to appeal. We are concerned about the constitutionality of the statute...against disrupting a public meeting."

A jury found 10 of the 11 guilty of two misdemeanour charges of conspiring to disrupt, and disrupting, Oren's speech. All 10 students received three years of probation; after a required 56 hours of community service, the probation will be reduced to one year.
Full report on the Huffington Post site