Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer to Appeal Banning from UK

NEW YORK, July 2, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Human rights activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) are challenging the decision to ban them from the United Kingdom, and have instructed lawyers in that country.

Geller and Spencer are challenging British Home Secretary Theresa May's decision to prevent them from entering the country in order to lay a wreath at a memorial for British soldier Lee Rigby on Armed Forces Day, June 29. Rigby was murdered by Islamic jihadists on a street in Woolwich on May 22.

Geller, AFDI's Executive Director, said in a statement: "I have been banned in Britain. My crime? My principled dedication to freedom. I am a human rights activist dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights for all before the law. I fiercely oppose violence and the persecution and oppression of minorities under supremacist law. I deplore violence and work for the preservation of freedom of speech to avoid violent conflict."

AFDI's Associate Director, Spencer, noted that the United Kingdom recently admitted the Saudi Muslim cleric Mohammed al-Arifi, who has said: "Devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer." Spencer added: "Such open calls for jihad violence are apparently acceptable in Britain as long as one is in favor of such violence; only those who oppose it are excluded."

A petition asking British authorities to remove the ban and allow Geller and Spencer into the country has gained over 8,000 signatures in just a few days; it can be found at www.britishban.com. Geller and Spencer have also established a website for updates on the case and donations to this cause of free speech: www.britishlegalfund.com.

AFDI stands for:

• The freedom of speech – as opposed to Islamic prohibitions of "blasphemy" and "slander," which are used effectively to quash honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacism;
• The freedom of conscience – as opposed to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy;
• The equality of rights of all people before the law – as opposed to Sharia's institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

Join the AFDI Facebook page here.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at [email protected].

SOURCE American Freedom Defense Initiative

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