Prosecutors called it a “heckler’s veto” and a planned disruption of an Israeli diplomat’s speech at the UCI campus by 10 students with the intent to shut down the event.

Attorneys for the students on trial labeled it a carefully planned peaceful “interruption” and a “lawful expression of free speech.”

With those descriptions, opening statements got underway Wednesday afternoon in the trial of the students – seven from UCI and three from UC Riverside – accused of disrupting the Feb. 8, 2010, talk by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.