The city will pay $1.6 million to settle a 2013 discrimination suit in which several prominent Muslim clerics accused the NYPD of unlawful surveillance.
The Brooklyn federal court suit, filed by the ACLU on behalf of Imam Hamid Hassan Raza and others, claimed police had been harassing Muslim families and a Queens Mosque since 2002 – including sending undercover agents into mosques, bookstores and cafes in attempts to at intelligence gathering.
Raza, Imam at the Masjid Al-Ansar mosque in Brooklyn, also alleged that the entire Muslim community in New York City had been treated as “jihadis” following the Sept. 11 attacks.
The full sum of $1,671,868 will go to the various attorneys, including those from the ACLU, who have litigated the case on behalf of plaintiffs Raza, the mosque, the non-profit Muslims Giving Back, the Masjid at-Taqwa, and Mohammad Elshinawy.
Elshinawy claimed in initial papers his religious teaching was curtailed because of the surveillance, stemming from the notion that his father was a close associate of convicted islamist militant Omar Abdel Rahman — aka the “Blind Sheik” – who was convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Rahman died of natural causes in February at a North Carolina federal prison.
As part of the settlement, Brooklyn Federal Justice Pamela Chen ordered the City to remove the NYPD’s “Radicalization of the West” report from city sites, and that the NYPD “must fulfill its responsibility to preserve public safety and security” while realize the impact of their conduct on “lawful political or religious activity of individuals, groups, or organizations.”
“We and our clients are very pleased that the courts have approved this groundbreaking settlement,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in a statement. “Now New York Muslims and all New Yorkers will have strong protections from unconstitutional religious profiling and surveillance.”
The Law Department declined to comment on the settlement.
