Post date: Jun 06, 2012 7:43:54 PM
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (JUNE 6, 2012) (REUTERS) - A group of eight American Muslims from New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department on Wednesday (June 6) to stop a surveillance and intelligence-gathering program targeting Muslims.
A group of American Muslims sues the New York Police Department (NYPD) and New York City for surveillance activity in New Jersey.
"This morning Muslim Advocates filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of American Muslims in New Jersey challenging the New York Police Department's discriminatory and invasive surveillance program. It is the first direct legal challenge by victims of the NYPD's discriminatory surveillance program," declared Farhana Khera, the President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco-based legal and educational non-profit that filed the motion on behalf of the plaintiffs.
"In fact this lawsuit, entitled 'Hassan et al. v. City of New York', is perhaps the most important legal challenge to date brought by the American Muslim community to protect their rights and our nation's founding values," she added.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, challenges the NYPD's surveillance programs of Muslim neighborhoods outside the city, chronicling daily life including where people ate, prayed and got their hair cut. According to a Pulitzer prize-winning Associated Press investigation, police infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups and investigated hundreds more.
The NYPD has yet to respond to the lawsuit but noted the New Jersey attorney general determined last month that NYPD activities in New Jersey were legal, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said his department is obligated undertake such surveillance to protect New York from another 9/11.
"All law enforcement officials have an enormous responsibility -- but even law enforcement professionals say racial and religious profiling is just bad policing, plain and simple," explained Khera.
"We think Commissioner Kelly and his top management have gone too far. They've over-reached in a way that violates the constitution and that's why we're bringing this lawsuit today in federal court."
The lawsuit seeks to declare the NYPD's program illegal and unconstitutional.
"We are asking the federal court in New Jersey to do three things," explained Glenn Katon, Legal Director For Muslim Advocates. "First, we want a declaratory judgment that says that the surveillance targeting Muslims solely because they are Muslims is in fact unconstitutional; we also are asking the court to issue an order that prohibits the NYPD from coming into New Jersey and spying on Muslims solely because they are Muslim; and lastly, we are asking the court to order the NYPD to expunge or destroy the records that it has collected in an unconstitutional manner."
"We are Muslims, we are Americans, and we go about our daily lives trying to establish the best kind of contribution that we can make to American society," said Imam W. Deen Shareef, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
"To find out that the New York Police Department actually took photographs of our mothers, our children, and those individuals that come into our businesses has created an atmosphere where there is certainly and undue suspicion that has been cast on the entire Muslim community," he finished.
The NYPD and the city will have until the end of June to reply to the lawsuit.