US Supreme Court weighs case against FBI for spying on Muslims post 9/11

United States Supreme Court Justices on Monday, 8 November conducted a hearing for the ‘secrets case’ against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) brought by the Orange County mosques alleging illegal surveillance on Muslims following the 9/11 terror attacks. Reports suggest that the case, once finalised, would determine whether the US government spying on the religious properties protected by secrecy would be a violation of religious freedom. In the lawsuit filed, at least three Muslim Americans accused the US FBI of surveillance on them inside the mosques which they labelled as ‘discrimination,’ despite that there were concerns about the national security following the deadly bombing of the World Trade Centres in September 2001 during the former President George W Bush’s administration. 

A former imam at the Orange County Islamic Foundation, and Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser AbdelRahim, both members of the Islamic Center of Irvine, brought the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, according to the US broadcasters. The trio argued that the FBI spied and targeted members of their faith solely because of their religion. As of Monday, as the US Supreme Court weighed the case, the FBI agreed that it spied on several Southern California mosques between 2006 and 2007, stressing that the move was prompted while the authorities were searching for the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The Federal Bureau, however, did not divulge many details about the covert operation, and neither dismissed or commented on the religious bias angle. 

FBI 'employed a paid informant' for surveillance 

The FBI “employed a paid informant person with a prior criminal history to infiltrate these mosques,” the lawsuit filed by one Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer with the ACLU civil rights group, read on Monday. The said informant named Craig Monteilh, it elaborated, was a convert who was instructed by the FBI to collect as much information as possible on people from the Muslim community. This included personal information such as their phone numbers, email addresses, as well as personal conversations, which the informant discreetly recorded, the plaintiff told a nonprofit legal and advocacy organisation in his statement. The latter met with Muslims in southern California and had adopted a Muslim name in order to get them familiar with him and then later conduct surveillance activities. 

FBI’s informant recorded religious prayers, conversations, and activities inside the mosque via a secret recording device that he allegedly hid in his car key fob, Arulanantham said. Footage from the site was also captured. An attorney representing the group stated that the informant  "became disgruntled," had an argument with FBI handlers, and decided to go public with the information, post which the congregants filed an official complaint. At the center of the controversy is now US’ 1978 surveillance law and that the court must or must not go forward with the case as doing so will reveal state secrets, the FBI has argued as it appealed to dismiss the case, adding that the agency cannot be sued for discrimination where national security is the concern.

In the hearing on Monday, Conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned the FBI’s request to dismiss the case without producing evidence which it stressed might reveal the state’s secrets. “In a world in which the national security state is growing larger every day, that is quite a power,” Gorsuch was reported telling the court. The case’s dismissal request was overturned by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in 2019, which said that the lower court will examine the FBI evidence privately if they were state secrets.