NYPD Sued over Spying on Muslims
Civil rights lawyers in the United States plan to take the New York Police Department (NYPD) to court to urge the police to stop its spying programs on Muslims in the city.
The lawyers filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to declare that the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims is unconstitutional and to have the federal court order the department to expunge all records in police files.
"Our mosque should be an open, religious, a spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship," Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff, told a rally outside police headquarters shortly after the suit was filed in the federal court in Manhattan.
Raza said he would tape his sermons at a Brooklyn mosque for the fear that the NYPD might take his words out of context while monitoring him.
The Associated Press first revealed in 2011 that the NYPD was spying on Muslims in the city. Since then, it is the third legal action against the department’s surveillance programs on Muslims, which according to the lawsuit started after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The California-based civil rights organization Muslim Advocates sued the NYPD over its counterterrorism programs in 2012 while in another action earlier this year civil rights lawyers urged a judge to stop the NYPD from watching Muslims in restaurants, bookstores and mosques.
Tuesday’s lawsuit explains how Shamiur Rahman, an NYPD informant, had spied on 20-year-old Asad Dandia, a college student who ran a charitable organization called Muslims Giving Back.
In a statement on Tuesday, New York City's law department defended the spying programs, with Celeste Koeleveld, a top city lawyer, saying the operations have helped the police “thwart several terrorist plots in recent years."
A senior NYPD official said last year that the department’s Intelligence Division, the police’s central unit in the spying program, had never triggered a terrorism investigation.
Source: Press TV
"Our mosque should be an open, religious, a spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship," Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff, told a rally outside police headquarters shortly after the suit was filed in the federal court in Manhattan.
Raza said he would tape his sermons at a Brooklyn mosque for the fear that the NYPD might take his words out of context while monitoring him.
The Associated Press first revealed in 2011 that the NYPD was spying on Muslims in the city. Since then, it is the third legal action against the department’s surveillance programs on Muslims, which according to the lawsuit started after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The California-based civil rights organization Muslim Advocates sued the NYPD over its counterterrorism programs in 2012 while in another action earlier this year civil rights lawyers urged a judge to stop the NYPD from watching Muslims in restaurants, bookstores and mosques.
Tuesday’s lawsuit explains how Shamiur Rahman, an NYPD informant, had spied on 20-year-old Asad Dandia, a college student who ran a charitable organization called Muslims Giving Back.
In a statement on Tuesday, New York City's law department defended the spying programs, with Celeste Koeleveld, a top city lawyer, saying the operations have helped the police “thwart several terrorist plots in recent years."
A senior NYPD official said last year that the department’s Intelligence Division, the police’s central unit in the spying program, had never triggered a terrorism investigation.
Source: Press TV
