FBI sued for information on surveillance of Bay Area Muslims

On August 24, the 15th day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Asian Law Caucus filed a federal freedom of information lawsuit for the release of Federal Bureau of Investigation records regarding the surveillance of Muslim communities and schools in Northern California.

A Freedom of Information Act request was originally filed with the FBI in March for documents from the FBI’s Virginia, Sacramento and San Francisco offices pertaining to the Bureau’s use of informants, how it carries out “assessments” of individuals or organizations, training agent receive regarding Islam or Muslim culture, the use of race, religion and ethnic origin for law enforcement purposes, and two community-participation programs – the FBI Citizenship Academy and the FBI Junior Agent Program, which is for middle school students.

Although the information request was granted expedited processing, the FBI has not turned over any documents, far exceeding the 30-day deadline mandated by the FOIA law.

Veena Dubal, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, said that the information request was prompted by a slew of complaints from Muslim and Middle Eastern families and communities in the Bay Area about actions taken by local and federal law enforcement.

Lawyers working on the suit claim that the FBI’s heightened attention on Muslim communities in the years after September 11th, regardless of the Bureau’s intentions, is having a decidedly negative effect.

“The FBI says they’re doing outreach to ethnic communities,” said Dubal. “What they don’t realize is they’re shooting themselves in the foot, instilling fear and messing up their relationship with these communities.

Special Agent Joseph Schadler with the FBI’s San Francisco office declined to comment on the lawsuit and referred further inquiries to the Bureau’s main office.

The complaint paints a portrait of Muslim communities riven by suspicion and fearful of worshiping openly at local mosques. Earlier this week, writer and Oakland resident Adel Samoha told me that for East Bay Muslims, FBI attention is an unwelcome fact of life.

Adel, who has been an American citizen for 10 years and is the secretary-treasurer of the Yemeni Grocers Association of California, told me he was approached by Oakland Police Officer Jad Jadallah two weeks after writing a letter to San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón in March, asking for Gascón’s help in dealing with difficulties local Yemenis were having with federal agencies.

Though Samoha never received a response from Gascón, two weeks later he was contacted by Oakland Police Officer Jed Jadallah. When Samoha met the officer in person, Jadallah began asking personal questions about his religion, marital status and friends. Samoha also claims Jadallah asked him to provide information to the FBI about suspicious people in his community. Samoha declined this request, and claims other Yemenis have had similar experiences with the OPD officer.”

“This is destroying community from inside and denying our existence as part of American society and our constitutional rights as U.S. Citizens,” said Samoha. When he conducted a survey at local mosques to gauge the level of FBI contact with local Muslims, fellow congregants would tell him of their experiences verbally but were too afraid to write them out.

The Bureau’s presence in local schools has also drawn criticism. Najala Hararah, a Palestinian-American resident of Fremont, has three children at the FAME public charter school, which has a predominantly Muslim student body and teaches Arabic. Hararah was alarmed to find out the FBI has a Junior Agent Program at the school, and that Bureau agents were attending school events. The Junior Agent Program [http://www.fbi.gov/kids/jsa/program.htm], according to the FBI website, is intended for 5th and 6th graders and is “developed to assist at-risk students in improving academically and to help them become good citizens.” It involves field trips to local FBI offices as well as fitness exercises.

Hararah said she was stunned to learn that the FBI was focusing on the Muslim community’s children . “Why is the FBI going into schools?” she asked. Hararah suspects the program is a recruiting tool and hopes the lawsuit will provide more information.

Like Adel Samoha, Hararah told me that FBI activities and surveillance are sowing suspicion and distrust in her community. Some parents, she claims, are reluctant to talk about the issue or challenge the FBI’s presence at FAME because their children enjoy attending a school where their Muslim background makes them an outsider.

As a citizen of twenty-five years, Hararah believes she and other Muslims are being treated like second-class Americans. The lawsuit, she said, is a challenge to that new status quo:

“Why do we have to settle for less because of 9/11?”