How the LA Times reported this case on 3rd June

Men bedeviled in bid for sanctuary

Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle believed they would find a free-speech haven in the U.S

"They thought they had found safe harbor from the English court that three days earlier had convicted them of hate-related writings originating on their website.
Rather than wait for sentencing -- expected to range from a year or two for Whittle to perhaps five years or more for Sheppard -- the men skipped bail and hopped a plane in Dublin, believing that U.S. free-speech traditions and the visa waivers they secured at an Irish airport would shield them.

The men, known as the "heretical two" to supporters, aren't in U.S. custody because of their world views. Nor have they committed any crime in America

"All they had to do," says attorney Bruce Leichty, who represented them early in the case, "was get off the plane in LAX and walk off into the free world."

Their lengthy detention is largely the product of the asylum-seeking process that Sheppard and Whittle brought on themselves when they entered the country

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice in Orange County said their visa waivers became invalid once they indicated to officers at LAX that they intended to try to stay in the United States.


"People are entitled to hold racist and extreme opinions which others may find unpleasant and obnoxious," Mari Reid, a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service's Counter Terrorism Division in England said in a prepared statement earlier this year about the case.

"What they are not allowed to do is to publish or distribute those opinions to the public in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner either intending to stir up racial hatred or in circumstances where it is likely racial hatred will be stirred up."

The vast majority of the material in this case concerned Jewish people, Reid said, "but there was also material relating to black, Asian and non-white people generally, all described in derogatory terms using offensive language."