Excerpt:
It took eight months, nearly $16,000 in legal fees, and the perseverance of a Muslim lawyer, but the British government has been overruled in its notorious decision this February to ban Dutch politician Geert Wilders from entering the country.
In a decision with important implications for free speech, London's Asylum and Immigration Tribunal yesterday ruled that the British Home Office, under the authority of former home secretary Jacqui Smith, was wrong to turn Wilders away when he arrived in Heathrow airport this February to screen his anti-Islam documentary, "Fitna," for the British parliament.
Depicting Wilders as a threat to the public, the Home Office had used a 2006 law that allowed for the exclusion of those who represent "a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society." At the time, Wilders protested that his expulsion was an outrageous violation of free speech and vowed to fight the ban. With the support of his legal team – including a British Muslim lawyer, Arfan Khan – and the backing of the immigration tribunal, Wilders seems to have won the fight.