The Rev. Terry Jones is to file an appeal today in Wayne County Circuit Court over a Dearborn court’s decision against him last week that thwarted his plans to protest outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, an attorney said Monday.

“It was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech,” said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel for the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Jones.

Jones, the Florida pastor who ordered the burning of a Quran last month, was to protest Friday outside the mosque in Dearborn, but Wayne County prosecutors filed an unusual complaint against him, saying he would breach the peace if he rallied.

A jury agreed with prosecutors and Jones was briefly jailed, then released after posting a $1 bond. He was banned from the mosque and adjacent property for three years.

“This is America, not a banana republic,” Thompson said Monday. “We still revere the Constitution. … We have to protect Terry Jones and anyone else who has a right to free speech rather than throw them in jail.”

This is the latest effort by the Thomas More Law Center, a Christian group, to fight what it sees as the growth of radical Islam in the U.S.

The center also filed a lawsuit this year on behalf of four Christian missionaries arrested in Dearborn and against the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation bus system after it refused to run ads critics said were anti-Islam.

Dearborn officials and Wayne County prosecutors have said that if Jones protested at the mosque, it might lead to possible violence because of Jones’ past actions.

Source : Detroit Free Press