NEW YORK-
A federal district judge in the United States on Thursday ruled that the secret surveillance of mosques, business owned by Muslims and a Muslim student group by the New York Police Department (NYPD) does not violate the US constitution.
District Judge William Martini in Newark, New Jersey, threw out a lawsuit filed by a group of New Jersey Muslims who claimed the NYPD illegally targeted them for undercover monitoring, solely for the reason of being Muslims.
NYPD’s widespread program was first revealed in a series of articles that reported that the officers from the department had infiltrated Muslim organizations throughout the region, following the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11, 2001.
The plaintiffs in the case are led by Syed Farhaj Hassan, a US Army reservist.
The petitioners claim that the surveillance programme impaired their freedom of expression, threatened their careers and caused them to abandon religious services.
Judge Martini gave a 10-page ruling, saying that city had convincingly argued that the surveillance programme was built on anti-terrorism intentions and did not seek to target Muslims.
“While this surveillance program may have had adverse effects upon the Muslim community, the motive for the program was not solely to discriminate against Muslims, but rather to find Muslim terrorists hiding among ordinary, law-abiding Muslims,” Martini wrote.
Baher Azmy, of The Centre for Constitutional Rights , compared Martini’s ruling with the US Supreme Court’s ruling of 1944 that termed the imprisonment of Japanese- American during World War II constitutional.
Azmy’s organisation was among the petitioners of the lawsuit, along with another group ‘Muslim Advocates.’
“The decision gives legal sanctions to broad, undifferentiated racial and religious profiling,” he said, calling it a “dangerous” finding.
He added that the plaintiffs would appeal against the decision.
A spokesman for the city’s law department declined to comment.
A similar federal lawsuit filed by New York Civil Liberties Union, against New York City in Brooklyn, remains pending.
