The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) violated the First Amendment rights of hundreds of Muslim Americans by using a former convict to infiltrate several California mosques, says a lawsuit filed on Feb. 22, 2011. The lawsuit alleges Muslim Americans were targeted by the FBI solely for their religious beliefs, and this conduct adversely affected their community and religious donations. Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California and Council on American-Islamic Relations Los Angeles office on behalf of three plaintiffs, the suit seeks unspecified damages and the destruction or return of information the FBI collected.
According to the lawsuit, between 2006-2007 the FBI hired and paid Craig Monteilh to spy on members of the Islamic Center of Irvine and other Southern California mosques. He was told by FBI agents “that Islam was a threat to America’s national security,” and to collect e-mail address, phone numbers, and other pertinent information about mosque members. Using the alias Farouk al-Aziz, he regularly attended services and events to collect the information and record conversations he had with mosque members in their homes and other places.
Judge Responds
Responding to claims that Muslim organizations have been illegally spied upon in southern California, a federal judge said on April 20, 2009 he will conduct a review of the FBI records. The decision comes after nearly three years of legal efforts by the ACLU and American Muslim groups to obtain information that they say would demonstrate illegal surveillance by the FBI. The FBI will have 30 days to deliver approximately 100 pages of related surveillance memos and the files on the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its leaders to the judge.
Judge Cormac J. Carney said after he receives the FBI files he will determine which, if any, can be released to the public and what must remain protected under federal law. In 2007 six Muslim groups and five individuals sued the FBI and the Department of Justice alleging the agency failed to turn over records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) a year earlier. The FBI had released largely redacted documents, claiming the information contained in the files were beyond the scope of the FOIA request.
Applauding the judge’s decision, ACLU attorney, Jennie Pasquarella said, “There’s a reason why they don’t want to disclose this information. It will show why they’ve surveilled people and we think it might show they’re surveilling people based on their religion.”
This ruling comes in the wake of a steady decline in relations between the FBI and American Muslim groups. In March 2009, the American Muslim Taskforce, a coalition of Islamic groups, said they may boycott cooperation with FBI investigations after learning that a paid FBI informant was discovered in a southern California mosque.
More Revelation of FBI Surveillance Targeting Muslims
Concerns over the FBI informant in the California mosque have raised a red flag for many American Muslim groups and individuals who feel the FBI is targeting them for their religious beliefs. “The Somali Muslim community in particular feels that they are under siege by law enforcement,” explained a spokesman for CAIR, describing the situation for Somali Muslims in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Repeated government intrusions of local Somali owned businesses, racial profiling and the use of “questionable” tactics to investigate a possible terrorist recruitment plan had made many American Muslim advocacy groups and local Somali Muslims feel threatened by the FBI.
Approximately 2,500 Somali Muslims live in the St. Louis area. Several have reported to local and national American Muslim advocacy groups that they have been contacted by the FBI to share information about fellow community members or threatened with immigration problems if they do not cooperate with FBI investigations. “They want some constant contact who will tell them news frequently, what’s going on in the community, who’s doing what, if there is are any guests coming along doing fundraising,” said an official for the Masjid Bilal mosque in St. Louis.
In Michigan, American Muslim leaders asked U.S. Attorney general Eric Holder to investigate claims that the FBI sought out community members to spy on Islamic leaders and local congregations. Many of the complainants say the FBI promised to help resolve their immigration problems in exchange for their monitoring of mosques. Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of CAIR, said that there is no justification for the recent contacts made by the FBI into the American Muslim population and their actions amount to a “fishing expedition.” “If there was a specific imam who they felt was telling people to support Osama bin Laden, that’s a different story – we wouldn’t have a problem with that,” said Walid.
Former Informant Sues FBI
A former FBI informant who infiltrated several California mosques in 2006 has joined the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) lawsuit against the FBI for its controversial spying program, according to the Guardian on March 20, 2012. This and other incidents such as the NYPD’s secret CIA-backed intelligence gathering operation aimed at innocent Muslim-Americans in the New York and New Jersey area appear to indicate that law enforcement is unfairly targeting people based on their religious beliefs. Monteilh agrees, saying, “The way the FBI conducts their operations, It is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It’s such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It’s fixed.”
Original Lawsuit Partially Dismissed
On Aug. 15, 2012, a federal district court partially dismissed the lawsuit filed against the U.S. government and the FBI for using a paid informant to infiltrate California-area mosques and spy on its members. The court accepted the government’s assertion of the state secrets privilege, arguing the disclosure of an unconstitutional domestic spying program might reveal sensitive information. The court, however, permitted claims under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows those who were improperly subjected to electronic surveillance to proceed against individual FBI agents and supervisors. Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they would file an appeal.