IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – A police officer said Monday he arrested a journalist in an undisciplined Black Lives Matter protest last year in Iowa after she did not leave when she repeatedly fired pepper clouds to disperse people.
Des Moines agent Luke Wilson said he was unaware that Andrea Sahouri was a Des Moines Register journalist when he responded to a chaotic scene in which protesters smashed shop windows and threw stones and water bottles at police in front of Merle Hay Mall on May 31st.
Wilson said he sprayed the irritating chemical on a device known as a nebulizer to clean a commercial parking lot and that it worked to disperse the rest of the group, including Sahouri’s then-boyfriend Spenser Robnett. But he said Sahouri stayed ill despite the spray, which can cause a burning sensation and temporary blindness.
“Once I determined I wasn’t leaving, I had to take action,” Wilson said, adding that he still didn’t know who he was.
Wilson, who was wearing a riot helmet and a gas mask, said he approached and grabbed Sahouri with his left hand while he still had the fog on his right. He said he fired more pepper spray when Robnett returned and tried to remove Sahouri from his custody, hitting them close again.
Wilson testified on the first day of trial for Sahouri and Robnett on charges of lack of dispersal and interference in official acts. Prosecutors continued their case despite local, national and international pressure leaving behind the rare effort to punish a working journalist.
If convicted, they would be fined hundreds of dollars and have a criminal record. A judge could also sentence them to up to 30 days in prison for each charge, though that would be unusual.
Journalists and human rights defenders in the United States and abroad have pressured Iowa authorities to step down, arguing that Sahouri was simply doing his job documenting the news event. Iowa Democrats have murdered one of their own lawyers, longtime John Sarcone in Polk County, for prosecuting the case.
The couple is being tried in a courtroom at Drake University in Des Moines as part of a unique program that allows first-year law students to observe actual trials. The university is broadcasting procedures, which are expected to last two days. A six-member jury was summoned at noon and heard opening statements and tax returns on Monday. The trial is set to resume on Tuesday.
The U.S. press freedom tracker has not recorded any other trials of working journalists in the country since 2018. Sahouri was one of more than 125 reporters arrested or arrested during the civil unrest that took place in the United States in 2020. Thirteen, including Sahouri, are still being prosecuted. although most of those arrested were not charged or charged, according to the group.
Employees of the newspaper Gannett, which owns USA Today, the Registry and hundreds of other newspapers, have flooded social media in support of Sahouri in recent days. The company finances its defense. The Columbia School of Journalism, where Sahouri graduated in 2019 before joining the Register, stood in solidarity Monday promoting the hashtags #StandWithAndrea and #JournalismIsNotACrime.
Amnesty International he also made his case known and demanded the dismissal of the charges.
Sahouri was assigned to cover the protest where activists demanded better treatment for people of color days after the death of George Floyd, a black man who was pronounced dead after a white officer put his knee to his neck for about nine minutes.
Prosecutor Brecklyn Carey told jurors that body camera footage will show police giving a dispersal order to a crowd that included the two defendants around 6:30 p.m. at the intersection in front of the mall. Witnesses will show that the couple was arrested 90 minutes later near the same intersection and that Robnett tried to separate Sahouri from the officer who arrested them, he said.
Carey urged the jurors in an initial statement to keep their “eyes set on the ball” and answer only three questions: was there a scatter order, did the two scatter and pull away from the officer?
But defense attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt told jurors the case was about a journalist who was mistakenly arrested while doing her job, adding that Robnett accompanied her to the event for security reasons.
He said the 6:30 p.m. dispersal order was only intended to clear people who were blocking an intersection and both were complying. The body camera audio played for the jurors showed officers shouting for them to “come back” and protest peacefully, while only a “scatter” order could be heard in full.
“No one told anyone to leave the scene. Quite the contrary, “Klinefeldt said.
When police deployed tear gas before 8 p.m., Sahouri and Robnett ran away on the corner of a Verizon store. Wilson then grabbed her and sprayed pepper spray on her face as she put her hands in the air and shouted that she was pressing, Klinefeldt said.
The agent told Sahouri that “this is not what I asked for,” Klinefeldt said. Wilson then fired pepper spray at Robnett after he called him a journalist. A second Registry reporter who was nearby was ordered to leave, but was not arrested, he said.
Sahouri was loaded into a police van and jailed for a couple of hours.
Wilson stated that she did not “hold much conversation” with Sahouri when he arrested her. He said he believed he had activated the body camera, but later learned that he had not done so and never tried to use a camera function to retrieve the video after deleting it.