WASHINGTON, 3 March 2006 — Civil and human rights lawyers are suing the National Security Agency, claiming it illegally wiretapped conversations between the leaders of an Islamic charity and two of its Washington-based attorneys.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the US District Court in Portland, Oregon. It asks that electronic surveillance by the NSA be ended because the agency illegally wiretapped electronic communications between the Oregon chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and lawyers Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, who represented them.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, froze the foundation’s US assets in February 2004, pending an investigation, and designated it a terrorist organization in 2004.
Al-Haramain was indicted in February 2005 on charges on conspiring to defraud the US in connection with a scheme to funnel $150,000 in donations to Chechen fighters in 2000. The charges were later dropped because the Oregon branch of the organization had shut down.
Suliman Al-Buthe, who once operated the nonprofit group in Oregon, relocated to Saudi Arabia. The lawsuit notes that the former parent charity in Saudi Arabia has never been designated as a terrorist organization.
The US government accused the foundation of aiding Muslim militants, but a source close to the case, who asked not to be identified due to the lawsuit, said these allegations were unfounded.
“OFAC came up with the notion that this organization was supporting Chechen militants, the fact is that Al-Haramain was supported by both the US and Russia. Although it is true that Al-Haramain did collect money for Chechen relief, the Russians administered that money. It was not sent to militants, or violent groups, unless it came through the Russians,” said the source.
The lawsuit argues that NSA did not follow procedures required by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and failed to obtain a court order authorizing electronic surveillance of the charity and its attorneys.
FISA experts, while stressing that they are unfamiliar with the specifics of the Al-Haramain case, said they question whether a FISA judge would agree to allow surveillance of conversations between US lawyers and their clients under the general circumstances described in the lawsuit.
“This issue goes to the heart of any legal activity,” Tom Nelson, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs in the suit, said in a telephone interview from Portland. “Our legal system doesn’t work when one side knows the other side’s secrets.” Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told journalists Wednesday that US authorities will review Al-Haramain’s filing, but he refused to elaborate.
Several targets of the US government terrorism prosecutions have challenged the warrantless eavesdropping in courts nationwide since the existence of the secret surveillance programs was revealed in news reports last December.
