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"Security agencies have no right to infringe on people's rights under flimsy pretext and without judicial permission and due process," said a plaintiff in the case.
The largest U.S. Muslim civil rights group on Monday announced it is suing Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal officials for placing one Palestinian American on its "no-fly" list and for seizing another's electronic device and interrogating him about his constitutionally protected organizing for a free Palestine.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations and its Los Angeles office (CAIR-LA) are suing Garland, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, Terrorism Screening Center Director Michael Glasheen, and other national security officials on behalf of Mustafa Zeidan and Osama Abu Irshaid.
According to the lawsuit, the men "are both United States citizens of Palestinian descent" who have never "been charged or convicted of a violent crime."
"Yet, recently, the federal government has placed Dr. Abu Irshaid and Mr. Zeidan on a secret list, subjecting one to a humiliating process of detention, questioning, and phone seizure at the border and barring the other from flying altogether," the filing states. Irshaid is on the terrorism watchlist while Zeidan cannot fly.
"Only one thing has changed for Dr. Abu Irshaid in recent months: his constant and passionate advocacy for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza and an end to the United States' complicity in that genocide."
"As a result of his status on the government's secret list now, Dr. Abu Irshaid is detained at the border by federal agents each time he crosses it," the document continues. "Federal agents ask... humiliating questions about his lawful associations and work leading a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of Palestinians."
As a board member and national director of Palos Hills, Illinois-based American Muslims for Palestine, Irshaid frequently appears as an expert on mainstream media outlets including NPR and Al Jazeera, where he warned last December of "dangerous smear campaigns that weaponize racism to silence the Palestinian freedom movement."
The lawsuit states that
federal agents "have successfully coerced" Irshaid into unlocking his phone, which they still held at the time the suit was filed.
"Only one thing has changed for Dr. Abu Irshaid in recent months: His constant and passionate advocacy for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza and an end to the United States' complicity in that genocide," the complaint stresses.
The lawsuit continues:
Mr. Zeidan has fared even worse. [He] travels to Jordan several times a year to visit and take care of his ailing mother. After purchasing a ticket to see her in May of this year, he showed up to the airport, only for officials at the airport to tell him that he was forbidden from boarding his flight because of his status on the government's secret list. The government has given Mr. Zeidan no explanation for why he's been placed on the no-fly List after years of flying overseas without any issues. Only one thing has changed in the last several months for Mr. Zeidan: He organizes a weekly protest to call for an end to Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza and the United States' complicity in that genocide.
"When I first came to the United States almost three decades ago what appealed to me the most about it were the constitutional rights and civil liberties that guarantee humans dignity," Irshaid said Monday at a press conference in Washington, D.C. announcing the lawsuit, "and that security agencies have no right to infringe on people's rights under flimsy pretext and without judicial permission and due process."
"The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington turned things upside down in the United States," Irshaid continued. "Harsh laws were enacted that infringed on the civil and constitutional rights of American citizens including the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty."
"American Muslims in particular became suspects merely because of their religious and ethnic background and were treated as guilty until proven innocent," he noted. "I understand the need to maintain security, but it must be conducted consistent with American values, and constitutional legal values and protections."
Explaining that he was previously on the U.S. watchlist from 2010-17, Irshaid expressed his dismay at finding himself back on it. However, he said he would not stop advocating for Palestine.
"As a human being, I reject killing, maiming, displacement, starvation, displacement, and terrorization of tens of thousands of children, women, civilians, and innocents, regardless of their nationalities," he said. "Moreover, as an American, I reject the complicity of American decision-makers in supporting such crimes with weapons, money, and the diplomatic immunity they provide to Israel."
"The right to political dissent is protected by the First Amendment," Irshaid added. "This does not make me less patriotic, but rather makes me more in line with American values."
Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) urged her House colleagues to condemn a proposal by U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to add pro-Palestine student protesters to the no-fly list.
"A sitting senator labels Americans protesting against a foreign country accused of carrying out a genocide funded with our tax dollars as terrorists and puts a target on their back to be attacked," said Omar, who is Muslim. "This is insanely dangerous and somehow no one will condemn it."
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation," the renowned author said.
In what one observer called "a whole new level of insanity and paranoia," renowned Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé—a staunch critic of Zionism—was detained and interrogated this week by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as he entered the United States at Detroit's airport.
In a Wednesday Facebook post, Pappé said that he was questioned by FBI agents for two hours after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Monday.
He wrote:
The two-men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America... What kind of relationship [do] I have with them?
"They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?" he added, "and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter."
"I know many of you have fared far worse," Pappé wrote, referring to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University in Scotland who last month was denied entry to Germany—and by extension all 29 Schengen Area nations—before the ban was overturned earlier this week.
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel's becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status," he added.
Pappé's treatment sparked outrage among Palestine defenders.
"The detention and interrogation of internationally renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé at Detroit airport by the FBI is latest in the long list of episodes of intimidation and bullying across the West to defend the indefensible—the Israeli genocide of Palestinians," University of California, Berkeley history professor Ussama Makdisi said on social media Wednesday.
Entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand said, "We've reached a whole new level of insanity and paranoia."
Pappé, 69, is a scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter in England. He's published over 20 books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, an examination of the Nakba expulsion of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist militants—who sometimes massacred Palestinians to sow terror among them—during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s.
He has also been a leading Israeli critic of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 125,000 people since the October 7 attacks. During a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Pappé asserted that Israel's current onslaught is "even worse" than the 1948-49 ethnic cleansing in many ways.
"What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza," he said. "Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse."
Pappé's latest title, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, details "how pro-Israel lobbying groups influence the Middle East policies of Britain, the U.S., and others."
Reacting to the author's detention, ACLU human rights lawyer and New York University professor Jamil Dakwar said, "One wonders if this 'VIP welcome' related to his anti-genocide activism and his new book."
"This threat is emerging the day before a vote on reauthorizing vast domestic spying capabilities?" wrote one journalist. "What are the chances!"
The House Republican leadership on Wednesday abruptly canceled planned floor votes on mass surveillance reforms shortly after unnamed U.S. intelligence officials told multiple news outlets that Russia has made alarming progress on a space-based nuclear weapon purportedly designed to target American satellites.
The timing of the intelligence leak raised suspicions among journalists and lawmakers who support reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), authority that allows U.S. agencies to spy on non-citizens located outside of the country.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency have regularly abused Section 702 to collect the data of American journalists, activists, and even members of Congress without a warrant—abuses that have spurred the latest push for reforms.
"Very interested to learn about this threat," said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who is part of the ideologically diverse coalition that wants substantive FISA changes. "Also very interested to know why the spy guys are raising mysterious alarms right before we're about to reform illegal domestic surveillance under FISA."
Lee's comment came in response to a vaguely menacing statement from Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Turner said Wednesday morning that the committee provided all members of Congress with "information concerning a serious national security threat," without providing any specific details.
"I am requesting that President [Joe] Biden declassify all information related to this threat so that Congress, the administration, and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat," added Turner, an outspoken supporter of upholding federal agencies' mass spying authority under Section 702.
The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein noted that Turner "has tweeted out support for 702 at least a dozen times in the past year alone."
"I wonder if that has anything to do with his decision to apprise us of this ominous threat!" Klippenstein wrote in his newsletter.
Klippenstein's colleague at The Intercept, Daniel Boguslaw, had a similar reaction to Turner's statement.
Wow. This threat is emerging the day before a vote on reauthorizing vast domestic spying capabilities? And the head of the house intel wants to declassify it? What are the chances! https://t.co/2sKCn3P3nY
— Daniel Boguslaw (@DRBoguslaw) February 14, 2024
Reporting by The New York Times, ABC News, and other prominent outlets soon made clear that the secret information Turner referenced was related to Russian anti-satellite weaponry, which Moscow has been working on for years.
But officials and lawmakers privy to the intelligence, which was reportedly obtained under Section 702 authority, were quick to stress that the "serious national security threat" that Turner invoked was in no way imminent.
"It is a serious national security issue in the medium-to-long term that the Congress and the administration need to focus on," said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "But no need to buy gold."
Which begs the question: If the supposed threat to U.S. national security isn't urgent, why did Turner choose to raise the issue a day before the House was set to vote on whether to reform and reauthorize Section 702?
Citing one unnamed U.S. official, The Washington Post reported that Turner "appears to want to use the information about the adversary capability to convince skeptical colleagues that 702 is an indispensable intelligence tool."
"Lawmakers in the House and Senate have been in possession of the raw intelligence concerning the foreign capability for several weeks and were preparing to learn how the administration might respond," the Post added. "Turner's disclosure could make that response more difficult if it revealed information about how the intelligence was obtained in the first place."
In the wake of the flurry of news stories on the U.S. intelligence, Raj Shah, a spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), announced on social media that the GOP leadership has decided to postpone a vote on Section 702 reform and reauthorization indefinitely "to allow Congress more time to reach consensus."
Without congressional action, Section 702 will expire on April 19.
"The FBI's boosters on the Intelligence Committee are afraid to vote on key reforms—but these votes are long overdue and something the American people deserve."
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, called Johnson's decision to cancel Thursday's votes "jaw-dropping" and accused members of the House Intelligence Committee of "waging a propaganda campaign" to tank popular, bipartisan reform efforts.
Last month, the House Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly passed legislation that would require "all intelligence agencies and the FBI to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before conducting any query of a U.S. person," along with other reforms.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence passed its own bill that Goitein argued is "designed to look like reform while doing nothing at all," allowing the FBI to "continue abusing Section 702."
Because the House judiciary panel has jurisdiction over surveillance matters, Johnson should have run with its bipartisan bill, Goitein wrote.
"Instead, Johnson orchestrated a new bill, framed as a 'compromise' but in fact closely tracking HPSCI's bill," Goitein wrote, alluding to the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act.
Let’s review. The Chair of HPSCI made a public statement that frightened the American people, may have compromised intelligence sources, and was wholly unnecessary given the absence of any urgent threat, in order to gin up a new (bogus) argument against Section 702 reform. 12/13
— Elizabeth Goitein (@LizaGoitein) February 15, 2024
Sensing broad support for reform, Section 702 supporters on Wednesday gummed up the works during a House Rules Committee hearing on the new legislation. Johnson then yanked the bill, which reform advocates were trying to amend to include greater privacy protections.
Jake Laperruque, deputy director on surveillance at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a statement that "privacy advocates and Judiciary Committee leadership made clear this week that we are ready and eager to vote on FISA, and the surveillance loopholes that are misused to evade warrant rules."
"The FBI's boosters on the Intelligence Committee are afraid to vote on key reforms—but these votes are long overdue and something the American people deserve," Laperruque added. "It's time to stop punting and bring the debate over warrantless FISA surveillance to the House floor."