US: Prosecutors drop all charges against Columbia's pro-Palestine student protesters
Prosecutors in the city of New York have dropped all charges against most of the students and activists who were arrested by police for occupying a Columbia University building in protest of the school's investments in companies profiting from Israel's war on Gaza.
Thirty-one out of the 46 people who were arrested in April had their charges dismissed. The Manhattan district attorney's office said they would drop the charges against the 31 individuals, citing "prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence".
Prosecutors said the remaining 14 protesters would also have their charges dropped, on the condition that they not get arrested over the next six months. However, the defendants rejected this offer, and both sides are due back in court on 25 July.
None of the defendants had a criminal history prior to their arrests, and they were all charged with trespassing in the third degree, which is a misdemeanour under US law.
All the students who were arrested are facing disciplinary proceedings that include suspensions and expulsions.
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Columbia has been the spotlight of the student protest movement in solidarity with Gaza over the past several months.
On 30 April, university administrators ordered police to conduct a sweep of the campuses of Columbia University and City College of New York (CCNY). Police ended up arresting around 300 protesters, with witnesses telling Middle East Eye that police had assaulted a number of demonstrators, and blocked them from receiving medical assistance.
The police raid was called after students at Columbia had taken over Hamilton Hall, a building on campus, and renamed it "Hind's Hall" after the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in February by Israeli tank fire.
Columbia also came under heavy criticism after the board of the school's law review journal shut down the website over the publication of an article that both accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, while also calling for a new framework to look at the Palestinian issue.
Last month, alumni of the university signed a letter pledging to withhold "all financial, programmatic and academic support" to the university until a list of 13 demands is met, including a demand to divest from "all companies and institutions that fund or profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine".
The letter, which currently has more than 2,200 signatories, also contains a demand for the university to finance the healthcare needed for the students "brutalised by the NYPD" on 30 April.
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