An Iowa official testified on Monday that he arrested a Des Moines Register reporter assigned to cover a Black Lives Matter protest last year after she did not leave the area after her pepper spray was fired.
Des Moines official Luke Wilson spoke during the trial of reporter Andrea Sahouri and then-boyfriend Spenser Robnett, saying he did not know at the time that Sahouri was a reporter, the Associated Press reported. Sahouri and Robnett face illicit charges of non-dispersion and interference with official acts.
The case against Sahouri has received local, national and international scrutiny from journalists and human rights defenders, as she is considered the first active journalist to be tried in the United States since 2018, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker.
In his testimony, Wilson said he responded outside the Merle Hay mall on May 31, where protesters were breaking windows and throwing projectiles, such as rocks and water bottles, at police officers. He said he fired pepper spray from a nebulizer to disperse the crowd, but Sahouri remained.
“After determining that she would not leave, I had to act,” he said, according to the AP.
The officer said he grabbed Sahouri while shooting pepper spray with his other hand, which hit her and Robnett, who returned to rescue her from custody. Wilson said he thought he activated his body camera, but later found out that he did not.
Prosecutor Brecklyn Carey told jurors that the footage shows the police directing a crowd that included Sahouri and Robnett to disperse around 6:30 pm and shows 90 minutes after Robnett tries to remove Sahouri from the arresting police officer, according to the AP.
But defense lawyer Nicholas Klinefeldt argued that the 6:30 pm order was addressed to anyone blocking an intersection and that the couple followed those instructions.
He said Sahouri and Robnett fled when the tear gas was released an hour and a half later, and the policeman grabbed her and sprayed him with pepper while she identified herself as a journalist, to which Wilson supposedly replied, “That’s not what I asked”
The Black Lives Matter protests erupted nationally last summer after George Floyd was killed after a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.
Sahouri was among more than 125 reporters detained or imprisoned during the demonstrations in 2020, with the majority not being charged or having their charges dismissed. Twelve other reporters are still facing prosecution, the AP reported, citing the US Press Freedom Tracker.
If the two are found guilty, they will face hundreds of dollars in fines, criminal records and, although unlikely, potentially up to 30 days in prison on each charge.