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<h1><font size=4><b>Muslims file federal suit to stop NYPD
spying</b></font></h1><font size=3>Published June 06, 2012<br><br>
Associated Press<br>
</font><font size=1>
<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/06/nj-muslims-file-federal-suit-to-stop-nypd-spying/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/06/nj-muslims-file-federal-suit-to-stop-nypd-spying/<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>WASHINGTON – Eight Muslims filed a federal
lawsuit Wednesday in New Jersey to force the New York Police Department
to end its surveillance and other intelligence-gathering practices
targeting Muslims in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The
lawsuit alleged that the police activities were unconstitutional because
they focused on people's religion, national origin and race.<br><br>
It is the first lawsuit to directly challenge the NYPD's surveillance
programs, which were the subject of an investigative series by The
Associated Press since last year. Based on internal NYPD reports and
interviews with officials involved in the programs, the AP reported that
the NYPD conducted wholesale surveillance of entire Muslim neighborhoods,
chronicling daily life including where people ate, prayed and got their
hair cut. Police infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups
and investigated hundreds more.<br><br>
Syed Farhaj Hassan, one of the plaintiffs, stopped attending one mosque
as often after he learned it was one of four where he worships that were
included in NYPD files. Those mosques were located along the East Coast
from central Connecticut to the Philadelphia suburbs, but none was linked
to terrorism, either publicly or in the confidential NYPD
documents.<br><br>
Hassan, an Army reservist from a small town outside of New Brunswick,
N.J., said he was concerned that anything linking his life to potential
terrorism would hurt his military security clearance.<br><br>
"Guilt by association was forced on me," Hassan said.<br><br>
The NYPD did not respond to questions about the lawsuit but noted the New
Jersey attorney general determined last month that NYPD activities in New
Jersey were legal.<br><br>
NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said his department is obligated to
do this type of surveillance in order to protect New York from another
9/11. Kelly has said the 2001 attacks proved that New Yorkers could not
rely solely on the federal government for protection, and the NYPD needed
to enhance its efforts.<br><br>
Hassan said he served in Iraq in 2003 to stop the atrocities of former
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's secret police.<br><br>
"I didn't know they had one across the Hudson," he said,
referring to the NYPD intelligence division.<br><br>
California-based Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organization that meets
regularly with representatives of the Obama administration, is
representing the plaintiffs in the case for free.<br><br>
"The NYPD program is founded upon a false and constitutionally
impermissible premise: that Muslim religious identity is a legitimate
criterion for selection of law-enforcement surveillance targets,"
the lawsuit said.<br><br>
New Jersey lawmakers were outraged earlier this year when they learned of
the surveillance. But after a three-month review, the state's attorney
general found that the NYPD did not violate any state laws when it spied
on Muslim neighborhoods and organizations. The attorney general found no
recourse for the state of New Jersey to stop the NYPD from infiltrating
Muslim student groups, video-taping mosque-goers or collecting their
license plate numbers as they prayed.<br><br>
No court has ruled that the NYPD programs were illegal. But the division
operates without significant oversight: The New York City Council does
not believe it has the expertise to oversee the intelligence division,
and Congress believes the NYPD is not part of its jurisdiction even
though the police department receives billions in federal funding each
year.<br><br>
Members of Congress and civil rights groups have urged the Justice
Department to investigate the NYPD's practices. A Justice Department
spokeswoman said they are still reviewing the requests. Federal
investigations into police departments typically focus on police abuse or
racial profiling in arrests. Since 9/11, the Justice Department has never
publicly investigated a police department for its surveillance in
national security investigations.<br><br>
Because of widespread civil rights abuses during the 1950s and 1960s, the
NYPD has been limited by a court order in what intelligence it can gather
on innocent people. Lawyers in that case have questioned whether the
post-9/11 spying violates that order. The lawsuit filed Wednesday is a
separate legal challenge.<br><br>
The NYPD and New York officials have said the surveillance programs
violated no one's constitutional rights, and the NYPD is allowed to
travel anywhere to collect information. Officials have said NYPD lawyers
closely review the intelligence division's programs.<br><br>
"The constitutional violation that the NYPD did commit was blanket
surveillance of a group based on religion," said Glenn Katon, Muslim
Advocate's legal director. He said a program that treats people
differently based on religion, national origin or race is subject to the
Constitution. "That's the crux of our claim," he said.<br><br>
A George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley, said it
would be a challenge to convince the government that the NYPD's practices
were illegal because the courts and Congress have allowed more and more
surveillance in the years since 9/11. But, he said, most of these
questions have been handled in policy debates and not in the court
systems.<br><br>
Nineteen-year-old Moiz Mohammed, a sophomore at Rutgers University, said
he was moved to join the lawsuit after reading reports that the NYPD had
conducted surveillance of Muslim student groups at colleges across the
Northeast, including his own. He said the revelations had made him
nervous to pray in public or engage in lively debates with fellow
students a practice he said he once most enjoyed about the college
atmosphere.<br><br>
"It's such an unfair thing going on: Here I am, I am an American
citizen, I was born here, I am law abiding, I volunteer in my community,
I have dialogues and good relationships with Muslims and non-Muslims
alike, and the NYPD here is surveilling people like me?"<br><br>
"We feel as though it was a violation of our constitutional and our
civil and our human rights," said Abdul Kareem Muhammad, one of the
plaintiff's in the case. Muhammad is the imam of the Newark mosque,
Masjid al-Haqq. That mosque was listed and pictured in a September 2007
NYPD report on Newark.<br><br>
"We have a very strong objection to that," Muhammad said.
"We condemn and denounce every form of terrorism."<br><br>
Muhammad said he and other Muslim community leaders have not been given
assurances that the NYPD is no longer conducting surveillance on their
communities.<br><br>
"That's become very disturbing, too," Muhammad said.
"There's a possibility that this is still going on."<br><br>
___<br><br>
Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman in Washington,
Samantha Henry in Newark, and Tom Hays and researcher Judith Ausuebel in
New York contributed to this story.<br><br>
Read more:
<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/06/nj-muslims-file-federal-suit-to-stop-nypd-spying/#ixzz1x1cZofwm">
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/06/nj-muslims-file-federal-suit-to-stop-nypd-spying/#ixzz1x1cZofwm</a>
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