On Wednesday, Plaintiff and Navy veteran Zachary Young responded to CNN’s citation of the Taliban’s “Sharia law” in a scathing filing. Young’s counsel of Freedman Normand Friedland LLP ripped into CNN’s defense in the $1 billion defamation suit by calling it “a masterclass in absurdity and desperation.” Additionally, CNN may have blown up their own Sharia defense with an article post just last week, which admitted the Taliban were only now implementing the travel restrictions for women their legal defense relied on.
In a filing exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, lead counsel Vel Freedman and counsel Joe Delich made the case for why CNN’s reliance on Sharia law should be rejected by the court:
Unable to marshal any evidence that Young did something illegal, CNN nonetheless claims the Court can’t grant summary judgement on the legality of Young’s actions because the evacuations were “almost certainly” illegal under Sharia law—which allegedly criminalizes the conduct of saving a woman’s life outside the presence of her male relatives.
In addition to noting that CNN did not cite any actual Afghan statute/civil code Young allegedly violated (nor did they cite any Islamic/Sharia scholars), the filing argues one of the reasons why CNN’s defense fails was because, “the Taliban didn’t implement their formal “restrictions” on women’s movement until last week, i.e. August 2024, years after the evacuations took place.”
Their evidence of this was an Associated Press article republished on CNN, which was also contributed to by a CNN reporter. “According to CNN and the Associated Press, the “First formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in 2021” was not enacted until August 21, 2024—three years later,” the filing pointed out, also noting that the allegedly defamatory reporting by CNN occurred on November 11, 2021.
The AP/CNN article further reported (bold added to highlight): “The laws ban the publication of images of living beings, threatening an already fragile Afghan media landscape; the playing of music; the transportation of solo female travelers; and the mixing of men and women who are not related to each other. The laws also oblige passengers and drivers to perform prayers at designated times.”
“CNN’s Jennifer Hauser contributed to this report,” it noted at the bottom.
The filing concluded on this point by saying: “Therefore, even if they would now be illegal (it’s not), Young’s acts were certainly not illegal at the time CNN made its defamatory remarks.”
CNN has not put forward any actual evidence that Young had broken Sharia law. They're just assuming he did largely based on the assumption that 'he must have done something, how else would they get people out?' According to unchallenged, under-oath deposition testimony of Young included in the filing, Young's team didn't even bribe Taliban guards because they were professional enough to pick and chose when to move based on the conditions on the ground.
The citation of CNN’s own article against them seemed to throw the defense team into a panic.
In an “emergency motion” submitted on Thursday, exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, CNN’s lead counsel Deanna Shullman (of Shullman Fugate PLLC) pleaded for Judge Scott Henry for a hearing later that day, and for the hearing scheduled for the next day (Friday, August 30) to be postponed for 40 days or have the reply stricken from the record:
To avoid reversable [sic] error, the only remedies available are 1) to postpone the hearing to a date that allows appropriate notice in compliance with the rule; or 2) strike the reply and prevent Plaintiffs from relying on or referencing the reply and the attached new evidence to support their motion.
Seemingly one of Shullman’s other complaints about the filing was that “Plaintiffs filed a 26-page reply in support of their Motion. The reply is longer than the original Motion.”
Elsewhere in Young’s filing, it pointed out that the citation of Sharia law was the latest effort by CNN to justify – after the fact – why what they said in the original report was accurate. Freedman and Delich recalled that at no point before August did CNN mention Sharia in their defense at all:
Here, there is not even a scintilla of evidence that a common mind would understand CNN’s use of the term “black market” to mean illegality under the Taliban’s Sharia law.
That just makes sense, because it’s undisputed that CNN didn’t intend anything about Sharia law when it published the Segment. Through two years of litigation and 17 depositions across all ranks of CNN from journalists to executives, “Sharia” was never mentioned, not once. Indeed, CNN testified that it does not believe that Young was involved in any illegal activity.
The filing also threw Sharia law back in CNN’s face by citing scholars who have written about “the Islamic doctrine of the of necessity, known as Darura,” which – in part – looks to the following quote from the Quran that says one could break Islamic rules if one’s life was in serious danger:
He has only forbidden you ‘to eat’ carrion, blood, swine, and what it slaughtered in the name of any other than Allah. But if anyone is forced to eat such things by hunger, rather than desire to excess, he commits no sin: God is most merciful and forgiving.
This would apply to the women fleeing the Taliban because their lives would be at stake otherwise, the filing argues: “CNN cannot seriously deny that the women and children Young helped escape the Taliban were threatened by death or serious injury.”
Some of the other points made in Young’s filing draw attention to the fact that CNN had failed to make Sharia the foundation of the case to begin with and that the Taliban were not the legally recognized government of Afghanistan by U.S. and internationally.
Freedman and Delich concluded the open statement by declaring:
While desperate times are generally thought to call for desperate measures, CNN’s Sharia law argument sinks to a new low. Condemning numerous Afghans to die by defaming Young wasn’t enough for CNN. It now mocks those who suffered and perished under the Taliban’s brutal regime by asking this Court to consider, enforce, and apply the Taliban’s rules as law—rules that treat women worse than animals. The argument is deplorable and offensive, but it’s also frivolous for the reasons above.
CNN should be ashamed of itself.
NewsBusters will be covering the August 30 hearing live. Keep an eye on our social media accounts.
