Javed Iqbal was born in Pakistan and moved to the United States when he was a teenager three decades ago.

He earned his living running satellite TV companies, including the HDTV Corporation, which he started in 2000. Through this company, he allowed some of his customers to get Al-Manar, a station run by Hezbollah.

On August 23, 2006, agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force came to his home on Staten Island before 6:00 a.m. and knocked on his door, and he let them in. His wife was home, and their three young kids were asleep. Some of the agents kept Mrs. Iqbal in a room away from her children for four hours.

The others started to interrogate Mr. Iqbal. He had been in the hospital just two days before for a panic attack, but they initially wouldn’t give him his medication.

They seized his computer and satellite equipment and then took him to his business office in Brooklyn, which they also searched.

Only then did they read him his Miranda rights, according to a filing by his lawyer.

From there, they took him to the FBI’s office, where “he was subjected to approximately eight more hours of uninterrupted interrogation,” the filing says. “Mr. Iqbal did not receive any food over this time and was held in handcuffs despite his protestations about his worsening health.”

He was taken into FBI custody and was charged with providing “material support” to a foreign terrorist organization, under Title 18, Section 2339B.

This prosecution “raises serious questions about how free our marketplace of ideas is,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, at the time.

Iqbal’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, in pretrial documents, vehemently disputed the charges.

He made two main arguments.

First, he said, Iqbal was being accused of something that is “protected First Amendment conduct that is exempted from Section 2339B by explicit statutory language, by its legislative history, and the case law.”

That section was amended in 2004 with the proviso that: “nothing in this section shall be construed or applied so as to abridge the exercise or rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Lawyer Dratel cited a House report on the legislation, which said: “The ban does not restrict an organization’s or an individual’s ability to freely express a particular
ideology or political philosophy.” (For the record, Dratel reported that Iqbal “has never practiced the Muslim faith and does not identify with, or believe in, any religion,” though the first paragraph of Iqbal’s indictment stresses Hezbollah’s goal of creating a “fundamentalist Islamic” state.)

Dratel argued that Iqbal was engaging in First Amendment activity. “Broadcasting the signal of Al Manar’s television programming falls squarely within First Amendment parameters,” he wrote. “It is beyond dispute that ‘core’ First Amendment values—speech and the right to publish news and information—are at stake.”

This broadcasting, therefore, is allowable under the statute itself, especially after the proviso added in 2004, he argued.

And if it wasn’t allowable under the statute, he added, then “the statute would be unconstitutional as applied.”

Dratel made a motion for summary dismissal.

The judge denied it.

Though Dratel felt he had a strong case and was prepared to take it to court, Iqbal entered a plea agreement with the government in late December 2008.

“There were strategic considerations that dictated this as the best course of action,” Dratel told The Progressive. He was reluctant to go into the details of the case.

“It’s a delicate time. I don’t want to impair his ability to get a lower sentence,” Dratel said. Though Iqbal could have gotten 15 years, his plea agreement was for 63 to 78 months, Dratel said. “We’re hoping for the low part of that, and the judge could give him lower.”

Sentencing is set for March 24.