U.S. civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, accusing it of illegally wiretapping conversations between the leaders of an Islamic charity and their attorneys.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Portland, demands the closure of the electronic surveillance by the NSA, arguing that it illegally wiretapped electronic communications between a local chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and two of its attorneys, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor.
The lawyers also demand one million dollars in damages for each of the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Washington attorneys and the Al-Haramain chapter by three Portland civil rights lawyers: Steven Goldberg, Zaha Hassan and Thomas Nelson.
The lawyers argue that the NSA didn’t follow the procedures required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and failed to obtain a court order approving the electronic surveillance of the Islamic charity and its attorneys.
“This case will show how the illegal program was implemented and used to the injury of United States citizens and charities,” Nelson said.
The lawsuit also accuses the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control of depending on the information the NSA obtained without a warrant to designate the Al-Haramain chapter in Oregon a “specially designated global terrorist” in September 2004.
Dave Fidanque, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Oregon, said the lawsuit is similar to several others filed by the ACLU recently.
“The law couldn't be clearer on this issue,” he said. “Not only is the NSA's spying program unauthorized by federal law, but we suspect that conversations of thousands of Americans have been subjected to illegal surveillance by the NSA.”
The chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a defunct Saudi Arabian charity, was set up in Ashland in 1997 as a mosque that also distributed Islamic literature. In February 2004, the chapter was indicted of allegedly laundering $150,000 in donations to Chechnya in 2000.
Lawyers for the Al-Haramain chapter have insisted that the money was only used for charitable purposes, but federal prosecutors alleged that the money could have been used to aid Chechen fighters.
The prosecution later asked a federal judge to dismiss the charges against the Ashland chapter, which was granted over the objections of attorneys for Al-Haramain, who demanded the government to show the evidence that support the prosecutors’ accusations.
Source:
www.signonsandiego.com