US
government told to compensate Islamic charity
Wednesday December 22, 2010 03:35:17 PM,
IANS
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Washington: A US
court has asked the government to pay compensation to an Islamic
charity after it was found that then president George W. Bush had
ordered wire-tapping of the organisation after the 9/11 attack.
Tuesday's ruling by Justice Vaughn R. Walker, the chief federal
judge in San Francisco, ordered the government to pay $2.6 million
in lawyers' fees and damages to officials of the Al-Haramain
Islamic Foundation in Oregon.
The judge said the officials were wiretapped without a court order
under a surveillance programme approved by Bush after the Sep 11,
2001, terror attack, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
He awarded more than $2.5 million in legal expenses to Asim
Ghafoor and Wendell Belew, officials with Al-Haramain, who the
judge said were wiretapped. He awarded the two officials each
$20,400 in damages.
The "years-long" lawsuit tested the balance between civil
liberties and the president's authority, the report said.
Though the dollar amount of damages was "relatively insignificant
for the government", the principle laid out by the judge was
"critical to all parties".
For the charity officials and their lawyers, "the ruling offered
vindication in a case that the Justice Department fought largely
by relying on the president's executive power".
"We brought this case to try and get a declaration from the
judiciary that the executive branch is bound by the law," said Jon
Eisenberg, a lawyer who represented the foundation.
The judge, however, said the government "had reason to believe"
that Al-Haramain supported acts of terrorism.
However, he criticised the way that Bush officials went about
approving in secret a wire-tapping programme that operated outside
the bounds of judicial scrutiny and in conflict with surveillance
rules set by parliament.
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