Lawsuit against the FBI for Spying on Muslims

Two civil liberties defense organizations accuse the FBI of paying a spy to record sermons and private conversations in mosques in order to expose possible Islamic terrorists.

A collective suit presented today in U.S. federal court accused the FBI of having unconstitutionally spied upon hundreds of California Muslims, focusing exclusively on their religion. The two civil liberties defense organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on Islamic-American Relations, representing three Muslim citizens who claim to have been spied upon, have brought suit against seven FBI employees, including its director, Robert Mueller.

The plaintiffs claim that the FBI violated the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the one that protects, among other liberties, the freedom of religion and the right to assembly — by paying a spy named Craig Monteilh for 14 months during 2006 and 2007 to go to different mosques and record sermons and private conversations in order to expose possible Islamic terrorists. There was “indiscriminately gather[ed]information,” says the lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs claim that he spied on them merely because they were Muslims.

Monteilh has contended in interviews that the FBI hired him in 2004 to infiltrate drug trafficking networks. In 2006, they asked him to go undercover and pretend he was a devout Muslim in order to obtain information about potential terrorists. The collaboration ended badly. Precisely one year ago, after his true identity was learned, the spy also sued the FBI, contending that it had abandoned him to his fate without giving him economic help to start a new life with a new identity. Now his picture and name flow freely around the Internet.

Monteilh’s undercover name was Farouk al-Aziz. Within the FBI he was known as “Oracle.” He passed himself off as a citizen with Syrian-French origins who had returned to Islam. He visited various mosques in Orange County, CA, until he finally began to focus on the Irvine Islamic Center. He went as far as to pray there five times a day, while he was recording all his interactions. By striking up relationships with the faithful ones, he was able to befriend them and to record them in their homes and in public places, such as gyms or coffee shops. He had gotten to the point where, he believed, he was able to present proof that would have possibly led to the indictment of a terrorist but, in 2007, the FBI rejected the case and cut ties with him.