Seattle Imam Files Lawsuit Over Secretive FBI Watchlist
Seattle Muslim leader Farid Sulayman said it was the usual drill for him last month when he flew to California to chaperone a youth basketball tournament. Checking in online proved impossible. At the ticket counter, he got a boarding pass with a special stamp — “SSSS” — indicating he would need an extra security screening.
He was told to go to a specific line, where federal agents ushered him past everyone else to search, as he put it, “every inch of my bag.” He felt all eyes on him.
At the gate, he found more Transportation Security Administration agents ostensibly conducting a random passenger search, which he found hard to believe because one agent walked straight to him.
On international trips, Sulayman said, border agents have pulled him aside for private questioning as soon as he stepped off the plane. And once, the 46-year-old imam — an American citizen who helps lead religious services at a South Seattle mosque, works for a nonprofit and drives for Uber on the side — tried to pick up a passenger at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Upon presenting his ID, Sulayman said, he was handcuffed and detained for over two hours.
Sulayman said an official at the gate told him he’d been identified as a “possible threat.” Why? It’s a question Sulayman says he’s been wondering for decades.
The imam believes he’s been put onto a federal government watchlist aimed at identifying known or suspected terrorists attempting to travel into or throughout the U.S. But he’s received no confirmation or explanation, typical of roughly a million people — according to an estimate by the Council on American-Islamic Relations — who share a similar fate.
Sulayman and dozens of others nationwide are suing the U.S. government in Maryland’s federal court over what they say are constitutional violations in a watch-listing system that puts people under permanent suspicion “without charges, without arrests, without even an investigation sometimes.”
“We’re hoping that Farid’s case is the one that ends the watchlist,” said CAIR lawyer Gadeir Abbas, adding it’s the biggest such lawsuit ever brought.
There are actually many watchlists, but feeding most of them is an FBI database that’s often colloquially referred to as “the” watchlist. It contains names of U.S. and foreign citizens.
Shared with many U.S. and foreign government agencies, local law enforcement, and some private corporations such as banks, it contains names of citizens around the world and can affect someone’s ability to travel, get a visa to the U.S., access credit and get a job, according to the Maryland lawsuit.
The government created the watchlist in 2003, at a time of heightened fear of terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. The need to more carefully monitor who came into the U.S. seemed apparent amid the wreckage and mourning. Some counterterrorism analysts say it is still necessary, if flawed.
Yet after 9/11, generalized and unfair suspicion, according to critics, fell upon Muslims, including American citizens. Many were detained for questioning, spied upon and added to the FBI database.
Some of these practices quietly continue, including the watchlist, which this year marks its 20th anniversary. In the last fiscal year, running through September 2022, border officials reported 478 encounters with people on the watchlist, and the current fiscal year’s numbers are already higher.
Once on the list, those targeted say, it is extremely difficult to get off.
Muslims remain the most affected, according to CAIR, which issued a report in June based on an analysis of a watchlist copy leaked in 2019. More than 98% of the 1.5 million names (some duplicating references to the same individual) likely belong to Muslims, CAIR concluded.
If correct, that’s worrying, said James Forest, director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“As we know, the majority of terrorist attacks, especially in the U.S. for the last 20 years, has not been by Muslim extremists but by right-wing extremists,” Forest said. He cited racist, antisemitic and anti-immigrant shootings at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Kansas bar and a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store.
The FBI, in a statement to The Seattle Times, said the list relies upon “specific intelligence-related criteria” and that security reasons prevent the agency from confirming whether Sulayman or anyone else is included.
“No one is added to the watchlist based on their race, ethnicity, religion, beliefs or activities protected by the First Amendment, or on guesses or hunches,” the FBI said. The agency described its top priority as protecting Americans from terrorism by using “every lawful tool” to preempt potential attacks.
A government brief in the Maryland case also argued that plaintiffs’ experiences amount to inconveniences and delays that “slightly burdened” them but didn’t impede their right to travel or religious practice.
Sulayman, however, says the constant scrutiny is embarrassing and tiring. “I’m a citizen of America with no criminal record, but they treat me as if I’m a criminal — or worse.”
Becoming an imam
Sulayman was born in Vietnam, part of the Muslim ethnic Cham population that represents a small minority there and in Cambodia. He came to the U.S. as a toddler, went to Seattle’s Roosevelt High School and attended community college for a couple of years.
Wanting to learn more about his religion, he applied to the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia — “the Yale or Harvard of Islamic universities,” in his mind — and won a scholarship. He left for Saudi Arabia in 1998.
The 9/11 attacks occurred midway through Sulayman’s time there. Many of the perpetrators were Saudi citizens. Sulayman said he began being pulled aside for additional security screenings when he visited home.
Source: seattletimes.com
