Danish court jails six in terror T-shirts case

[Nostalgia]

A Danish court jailed five people for selling T-shirts to finance Palestinian and Colombian ‘terror’ organizations yesterday, suggesting the wrong clothing choice could land you in a orange jump suit in the future.

Defence lawyers for the T-shirt floggers said they would appeal the decision, all the way to Europe if necessary.

Six people in all were convicted of selling the T-shirts, and other apparel including caps, which proclaimed support for the Armed Forces of Colombia and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both of which are classed as terrorist organizations by both the US and EU.

Five people from the company Fighters + Lovers received sentences of between 60 days and six months for producing and selling the offending shirts, while a sixth person got 60 days for allowing the group to use his server for their website, according to the EU Observer.

A seventh defendant, who promoted the T-shirts on his hot dog stand, was acquitted.

The T-shirts originated as a challenge to Denmark’s terror laws. The producers quickly ended up in court, but were cleared by a Copenhagen court which said the activities of FARC and the PFLP did not meet Denmark’s definition of terrorism.

Just for the record – insofar as there is a reliable one for these matters - FARC began as a guerilla revolutionary movement, but nowadays is more associated with financing its operations via the cocaine trade and kidnapping or killing people associated with the Colombian authorities. It was most recently in the news when the Colombian government freed a bunch of hostages it had been holding for six years or more.

The PFLP gained notoriety for airline hijackings and bombings in the 1960s and 1970s. One of its members, Leila Khaled, was a pin-up for the more radical chic end of the West’s own counterculture warriors. It is still active in Palestinian politics.

One lawyer for the defendants condemned the court’s decision as “very provincial” and a “totally insane verdict”.

The T-shirt merchants had raised some €3,000 by selling its T-shirts, but the authorities seized it, along with their remaining stock, before it could be sent to the cause(s
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09..._tshirt_trial/