Three Yale students were arrested after burning an American flag hanging from the front porch of a private home early Tuesday morning.
Senior Hyder Akbar and freshmen Nikolaos Angelopoulos and Farhad Anklesaria were arrested on charges that included reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, arson and breach of peace, the New Haven Register reported yesterday.
Both Angelopoulos and Anklesaria are foreign citizens, from Greece and Britain, respectively. Pakistan-born Akbar is an American citizen who grew up in California and is the son of a former governor of the Kunar province in Afghanistan. He served as a translator for U.S. forces during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
The officers who made the arrest saw the students at 3 a.m. on Tuesday while responding to an unrelated call, the Register reported. The students motioned for the officers to stop and asked how to get to back to the Yale campus. The officers gave the students directions and then answered the call.
Shortly thereafter, the officers returned to the street to see if the students had found their way home.
"As they approached [the house], there was a glow in front of the house which they identified as a flag mounted on a pole to the house, and it [the flag] was engulfed in flames," police spokeswoman Bonnie Posick told the Register.
Posick told the Yale Daily News that there was no indication the fire caused damage to the house and added the police report did not indicate whether the students were intoxicated, nor what their motivation might have been.
Akbar and Angelopoulos have bails set at $25,000, but Anklesaria's was lowered to $15,000. Of the three, only Angelopoulos made bond and was released Tuesday. The Register reported the other students were set to spend Tuesday night in jail after a Superior Court judge refused to release the men without bail. All three are expected to appear in court at a plea hearing on April 10.
The two-story house where the burning took place is a rental property owned by New Haven resident Mar Suraci. "It makes me sick to my stomach to think that someone would burn the American flag," Suraci told the Register.
Princeton students were quick to defend the constitutional right to free speech yesterday when they learned of the students' arrests.
"I'm all for the right to burn the flag as free speech," Jordan Bubin '09 said. He is considering burning a flag in an on-campus demonstration to protest the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. "But as for the Yale students, burning someone else's flag on their property sounds like vandalism."
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