Look who’s suing to quash U.S. terrorist screening

By Art Moore

(Image courtesy FBI)
(Image courtesy FBI)

A group established as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. is suing the federal government’s Terrorist Screening Database, contending it stigmatizes its targets without due process.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Associated Press reported, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Dallas on behalf of five Muslim American citizens.

CAIR said the Muslims face consequences for being on the watch list, “including the inability to fly on airplanes, intrusive screenings at airports, and the denial of applications for credit cards and bank loans.”

The database, charged CAIR’s senior litigation attorney, Gadeir Abbas, is “nothing more than a list of innocent Muslim citizens who have not been arrested, charged or convicted of a crime.”

Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer – noting CAIR was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case – asks, with a large dose of irony: “What could its purpose possibly be in wanting to end the Terrorist Screening Database?”

Support WND’s legal fight to expose the Hamas front in the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

He also pointed out that CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah as terrorist groups. Meanwhile, an Arab Gulf state, the United Arab Emirates, has declared CAIR a terror organization, along with the Taliban, al-Qaida and ISIS.

As WND has reported, several former CAIR officials have been convicted of crimes related terrorism, and CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad and chief spokesman Ibrahim Hooper have stated their desire to see America come under the rule of Islamic law.

CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper with CAIR Executive Director and founder Nihad Awad
CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper with CAIR Executive Director and founder Nihad Awad

Recently, a CAIR operative called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.

CAIR chapters, Spencer noted, frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement and the organization has “opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented.”

CAIR’s parent organization, according to FBI wiretap evidence from a Hamas terror-funding case, was founded at an October 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in Philadelphia that included Awad.

The leaders said the organization was formed to give a “media twinkle” to their agenda of supporting violent jihad abroad while slowly institutionalizing Islamic law in the U.S. A Muslim Brotherhood document entered into evidence named 29 like-minded Muslim organizations in the U.S. that shared the aim of convincing Muslims “that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands … so that … Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

CAIR has sued a co-author of a WND Books exposé, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” which documented the group’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Terrorist co-conspirator

The FBI cut off its relationship with CAIR after the organization was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas-funding case.

CAIR’s Awad was found to have participated in planning meetings with terror funder, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, which saw five of its officials convicted of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas.

Omar Ahmad, founder and former chairman of CAIR
Omar Ahmad, founder and former chairman of CAIR

Ahmad also was designated by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. At the trial, Special Agent Lara Burns testified CAIR was a front for radical Islamic groups operating in the U.S.

CAIR sued to have its name removed from the list of co-conspirators. But WND reported in 2010 a federal judge determined that the Justice Department provided “ample evidence” to designate CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator, affirming the Muslim group has been involved in “a conspiracy to support Hamas.”

After the FBI cut off relations with CAIR, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., urged Congress to follow suit, pointing to further evidence of CAIR’s radical ties in WND Books’ “Muslim Mafia.

“Why would anyone allow a group, who the FBI says is tied to terrorism, to influence national security policy, or any policy for that matter?” she said in a statement. “If the FBI has cut ties with CAIR, Congress should wake up and do the same.”

At a news conference in Washington in 2009, Myrick said of “Muslim Mafia,” which featured the work of an undercover investigation: “Now we have proof – from the secret documents that this investigative team has uncovered, coupled with the ones recently declassified by the FBI – that [radical Islamic] agents living among us have a plan in place, and they are successfully carrying out that subversive plan.”

Get the new paperback edition of “Muslim Mafia.”

Shortly after the book was published, CAIR filed a lawsuit against the undercover investigative team behind “Muslim Mafia,” alleging its reputation was harmed, and it sought damages in court.

But a federal court in Washington shot down CAIR’s claim that its reputation was damaged by the undercover investigation that alleged it was a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The court determined CAIR failed to present a single fact showing it had been harmed, and the organization gave up that specific claim against former federal investigator Dave Gaubatz and his son, Chris Gaubatz.

More than eight year later, however, CAIR continues to use various tactics to prolong the case, and it is expected to go to trial.

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Art Moore

Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College. Read more of Art Moore's articles here.


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