An Iowa officer testified Monday that he had arrested a Des Moines Register reporter assigned last year to cover a Black Lives Matter protest after she failed to leave the area after firing pepper spray.
Des Moines officer Luke Wilson spoke to reporter Andrea Sahouri and her then-boyfriend Spenser Robnett at the trial, saying he did not know at the time that Sahouri was a reporter, The Associated Press reported. Sahouri and Robnett are charged with felony non-dissemination and interference with official acts.
According to the US Press Freedom Tracker, the case against Sahouri has been investigated locally, nationally and internationally by journalists and human rights activists as she is believed to be the first working journalist to be tried in the US since 2018.
In his testimony, Wilson said he responded outside the Merle Hay shopping center on May 31, where protesters smashed windows and threw projectiles, such as rocks and water bottles, at officers. He said he fired pepper spray from a nebulizer to separate the crowd, but Sahouri stayed.
“Once I determined that she wasn’t going away, I had to take action,” he said, according to the AP.
The officer said he grabbed Sahouri while firing pepper spray with his other hand, which hit both her and Robnett, who returned to take her out of custody. Wilson said he thought he triggered his body camera, but later found out he hadn’t.
Prosecutor Brecklyn Carey told jurors that footage shows police directing a crowd, including Sahouri and Robnett, to disperse around 6:30 p.m. and 90 minutes later shows Robnett trying to pull Sahouri away from the arresting officer, the AP said.
But attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt argued that the 6:30 p.m. order was aimed at those blocking an intersection and that the couple followed those instructions.
He said Sahouri and Robnett were running when tear gas was deployed an hour and a half later, and the officer grabbed her and sprayed with pepper while identifying herself as a press, to which Wilson reportedly responded, “That’s not what I asked.”
The Black Lives Matter protests erupted nationwide last summer after George Floyd was murdered after an officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck for several minutes.
Sahouri was among more than 125 reporters detained or arrested during demonstrations in 2020, with most not being charged or their charges dismissed. Twelve other reporters are still being prosecuted, the AP reported, citing the US Press Freedom Tracker.
If found guilty, the two would face hundreds of dollars in fines, a criminal record and, while unlikely, possibly up to 30 days in jail on each count.