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.

After news about the spying became public, several mosques reported that members began avoiding public services and there was a decrease in religious donations. “This had a chilling effect on the Muslim community,” said Nura Maznavi, a lawyer for Muslim Advocates. “The FBI sent in someone with a criminal background to incite individuals in a place of worship. As a result people didn’t want to come to the mosque and pray.”
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said she could not comment on pending litigation but emphasized that the FBI does not target religious groups or individuals based on their religion. “Any investigation would be based on allegations of criminal activity,” she said.
However, guidelines that oversee the FBI’s surveillance operations were amended in 2008 to permit the monitoring of individuals or groups without evidence of wrong-doing. For more information about these guidelines, click here.
Information collected by Monteilh led to a single case against an Irvine mosque member. Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a naturalized US citizen from Afghanistan, was charged with making false statements to obtain his citizenship. The charge was eventually dismissed.

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.”

He claims he was paid about $11,000 and that his FBI contacts gave permission to have sex with one of the women his undercover operation was targeting. “They said if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex,” Monteilh stated. “So I did.” The Guardian referred to Monteilh’s statement as an “astonishing admission that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11.”
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

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.

The lawsuit had alleged American Muslims had been targeted by the FBI solely for their religious beliefs, and that this conduct adversely affected their community and religious donations.   The suit sought the destruction or return of information the FBI had collected. The February 2011 lawsuit had been 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.
According to the ACLU, “This marked the first time in recent memory that the government has asserted the state secrets privilege to dismiss a lawsuit brought by United States citizens alleging that a domestic law enforcement operation was violating their constitutional rights.”
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney said in his decision that although he was uncomfortable with the conduct of the government, he found that the interest of security outweighed the interests of the plaintiffs in this case. “The state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security,” he wrote in his 36 page order.
“We don’t believe the Constitution permits (Carney’s) conclusion and as a result of the court’s decision, hundreds of law-abiding Muslims in Southern California will never learn whether the government violated their most basic civil rights,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an ACLU attorney.