‘Don’t dismiss NYPD spy lawsuit’

A group of New Jersey Muslims who have taken legal action against New York City over its surveillance of Muslims say the city’s request for the lawsuit to be dismissed should be denied by the court.

On Friday, lead plaintiff Syed Farhaj Hassan argued that the lawsuit should proceed since the extensive intelligence-gathering program of the New York Police Department (NYPD) violated his First Amendment rights because it targeted Muslims based solely on their religion and without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

“This is for everybody; this isn’t just for Muslim Americans. This is for all Americans,” Hassan said, adding, “This is just another way of my personal little bit to defend the Constitution.”

Hassan stopped visiting the New Jersey mosque Masjid-e-Ali in 2011 when he found out that NYPD was spying on it.

Hassan, who works with the US Army’s 304th Civil Affairs Brigade, told NYPD that he stopped going to the mosque because he was afraid that his “security clearance would be in danger.”

NYPD was also spying on many other Muslim businesses, schools and mosques

The lawsuit, which was filed in June 2012, was the first to directly challenge the NYPD’s out-of-state surveillance programs, which targeted Muslim neighborhoods and chronicled people’s daily lives, such as where they ate, prayed, and got their hair cut.

Six months later, in December, NYPD asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming the police had done nothing wrong and their surveillance was constitutional since it has no discriminatory intent.

Commenting on the lawsuit, NYPD said that the plaintiff’s “allegations of injury are based upon fears and speculation,” and media outlets were to blame for any actual injuries because they revealed the program.

CAH/NT/HGL