CitizenGO video screengrab / Facebook
CV NEWS FEED // A federal jury in Michigan on Tuesday convicted seven pro-life advocates on charges of “conspiracy against rights” as well as for violating the controversial Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
The group of defendants includes Eva Edl, 89, who survived a Communist death camp as a child in Yugoslavia before fleeing to the United States.
Edl, Joel Curry, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Justin Phillips, Cal Zastrow, and Eva Zastrow each “face over 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands in fines upon sentencing,” The Daily Wire reported.
The Daily Wire also noted that the Biden-Harris administration “has been using the conspiracy against rights charge, originally designed for the Klu Klux Klan, to go after pro-life activists.”
The charges stem from a peaceful protest that all seven defendants took part in outside an abortion facility in the Detroit suburbs.
“Edl and Idoni were convicted on an additional charge for a pro-life protest” at another Michigan abortion facility, per The Daily Wire.
Edl, a Christian, said during the trial: “We need suffering in our lives in order to be purified and not feel sorry about ourselves.”
>> DATA: 97% OF FACE ACT PROSECUTIONS WERE AGAINST PRO-LIFERS <<
Edl told The Daily Signal in April: “When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die [in prison].”
As Danube Swabians – a German-speaking minority group in Communist Yugoslavia – Edl and her family were sent to a death camp by the authoritarian government of Josip Broz Tito shortly after World War II had concluded.
“Then our whole people was destroyed,” Edl recounted in her interview with the Signal. “We hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I know.”
The Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan reported that Edl
described how she was shipped off in cattle cars to a concentration camp in Yugoslavia at age 9: “We were packed body to body, and being a small child, I could hardly breathe. We had no food, no water … .”
The camp (named Gakowa, or Gakovo, according to Edl) was “primitive,” she said, and its purpose was the extermination of the Danube Swabians. Many of those in Gakowa with Edl died from starvation or disease and were buried in mass graves.
She slept on straw. She had her one dress. Very little food.
>> CATHOLICVOTE: WHY WE SENT A LETTER TO THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ABOUT THE FACE ACT <<
In an April op-ed published by The Hill, CatholicVote Director of Accountability Tommy Valentine wrote: “After years of living in hell, facing death daily, Eva’s family finally escaped to the U.S.”
“They believed that America was free, and that their rights would be protected by a government with their best interests at heart,” Valentine continued:
Sadly, Eva’s plight perfectly exemplifies how dangerous the weaponization of the U.S. government has become, and how far the left will go to punish anyone who interferes with their radical agenda.
