Oregon legal fight continues over terrorist designation
PORTLAND – The battle over whether the Bush administration illegally spied on attorneys for a defunct Islamic charity is heading back to federal court for a hearing over whether its only U.S. chapter was actually linked to terrorism.
In dueling motions, lawyers for the charity and the government argued over the U.S. Treasury Department’s declaration that the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation based in Saudi Arabia was a “specially designated global terrorist” organization.
The charity was disbanded by the Saudi government in 2004, shortly after the Oregon chapter of Al-Haramain was given the designation.
Lawyers for the Oregon chapter note that Adam Szurbin, the current director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the U.S. Treasury Department, the agency responsible for the designations, was not appointed until 2006.
Szurbin has renewed the designation of the Oregon chapter, but the charity argues that anything Szurbin says is merely hearsay and based on unreliable information in the administrative record of the case.
The Oregon chapter of the charity also argues it had no control over the activities of its Saudi parent and no knowledge of its activity outside Oregon.
But U.S. Justice Department attorneys argue in documents filed Thursday that the Oregon chapter “was part and parcel of the global AHIF (Al-Haramain) organization and cannot escape sanctions now by simply professing ignorance as to what the rest of the organization was doing.”
The government claims the parent Al-Haramain organization supported terrorism around the world and was linked to U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Treasury Department froze the assets of the Oregon chapter of the charity after it was indicted in February 2004 on federal tax charges alleging it laundered $150,000 in donations to support Muslim militants in Chechnya.
But those charges were later dismissed by federal prosecutors who said there was nothing left of the chapter, which had been based at a house in the southwestern Oregon town of Ashland.
Charity attorneys and government officials declined comment Friday on the latest filings in the case.
But lawyers for the charity said in court documents the government never provided them with the legal or factual basis for the special designation, a tool used by the Treasury Department to freeze assets quickly without the level of proof required as evidence in courts.
Attorneys for the charity say the recent government redesignation of the Oregon chapter as a link to global terrorism was a “novel and unauthorized step” that is “nowhere described or authorized in statute, Executive Order, or regulations.”
The arguments filed Thursday and last month in the opposing motions for summary judgment to end the case grew out of a lawsuit the Oregon chapter filed last year against the Bush administration, claiming it illegally eavesdropped on conversations between two of its attorneys in Washington, D.C., and a charity officer in Saudi Arabia.
A National Security Agency call log that lawyers for the charity say proves the eavesdropping has been the subject of an intense fight.
The government has refused to say what the document contains but claims it cannot be used because it falls under the “state secrets” privilege to prevent the introduction of evidence that might jeopardize national security.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last November the charity cannot introduce the document or affidavits describing it as evidence to prove any wiretapping, and it sent the case back to a trial judge.
The call log was mistakenly given to an attorney for the charity before FBI agents asked for its return and rounded up copies from other attorneys involved in the case.
The government has since insisted on keeping it under lock and key at a highly secure facility and has even resisted sharing it with the judge who initially heard the case in Portland.
A hearing is scheduled July 10 before U.S. District Judge Garr King in Portland on the summary judgment motions.