On Dec. 21, 2010 a federal judge ordered the government to pay legal fees and damages for illegally spying on a U.S. charity. Nine months after ruling that the government had conducted “unlawful surveillance” of phone calls between leaders of the now defunct Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (Al- Haramain) and two of its U.S. attorneys, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker awarded $20,400 to the attorneys . He also awarded $2.5 million in attorney’s fees to their lawyers. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has not said if it will appeal or pay the damages as ordered.

In March 2010, Walker ruled the government’s interception of telephone communications between Al-Haramain lawyers Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor to be “outside of the bounds of judicial scrutiny and in conflict with surveillance rules set by congress.”  The surveillance was conducted by the government in 2004 without first obtaining a special warrant from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. FISA requires judicial review and congressional oversight of covert surveillance activities between foreign entities and individuals in the U.S. Belew and Ghafoor filed a lawsuit in 2006 after Department of Treasury (Treasury) officials mistakenly sent them classified documents, including transcripts of their telephone conversations. [Click here for background about this lawsuit) It was the first time a court found the government had illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens under the warrantless wiretapping program during the Bush administration. All previous efforts lacked public evidence to show that it had been the target of illegal surveillance.

Lawyers for the attorneys criticized the authorization of the Bush secret wire-tapping program that operated outside the bounds of judicial scrutiny. “We brought this case to try and get a declaration from the judiciary that the executive branch is bound by the law,” said Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer representing Al-Haramain.

Plaintiffs had had also sought punitive damages because they claimed the wiretapping program showed a “reckless or callous indifference” toward their civil rights.  Walker denied that request, saying the investigators did not act in bad faith in following the guidelines of the controversial program.