US Supreme Court deals blow to Muslims who said FBI spied on them
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The US Supreme Court says the FBI had the right to invoke state secrets to refuse to provide information on the Muslim men's case.
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The informant allegedly tried, at the FBI's request, to incite the Muslims toward violence.
The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the FBI, who three Muslim men accused of having spied on them solely because of their religion, had the right to invoke state secrets privilege to refuse to give information to the court.
The judgment dealt a blow to the Muslim men's case and overrode a 2019 decision by an appeals court. The case, which had not completely been shut down, will now return to a lower court to continue its examination.
"This is a dangerous sign for religious freedom and government accountability," said the powerful American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiffs, on Twitter, adding that it will continue fighting.
Yassir Fazaga, the Imam of the Orange County Islamic Foundation, along with Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser Abdelrahim, say the FBI sent a confidential informant to several Orange County mosques in 2006 and 2007. They ordered the informant to pose as a convert and to gather information about the people attending the mosques.
Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union said "The FBI employed a paid informant person with a prior criminal history to infiltrate these mosques." The informant's cover story was of him being a convert out to rediscover his French-Algerian roots.
"He then was instructed by the FBI to gather as much information as possible on people in this community -- cell phones, email addresses, conversations, which he secretly recorded," Arulanantham told reporters.
The information recorded prayer groups in the mosque through a secret recording device hidden in his car key fob, and also secretly recorded videos in mosques, homes, and businesses in the area.
Not only that, but the informant, according to Arulanantham, tried, at the FBI's request, to incite violence, talking about things like bombing, Jihad, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, he scared a number of people who reported him to the FBI.
Without privacy, there is no freedom.
— ACLU (@ACLU) November 7, 2021
FBI v. Fazaga involves a challenge to the FBI’s unlawful surveillance of Muslim Americans. On Monday, it will be heard by the Supreme Court.
We sat down with plaintiff Yasser Abdelrahim to discuss the case. pic.twitter.com/2n7vBtg68v
