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| Police Papers Stir Islamic Alavi Foundation's Ire |
| 2002-12-24 |
| New York Law Journal The NYPD's bid to loosen federal restrictions on surveillance of political groups has angered a non-profit Islamic foundation. In a letter to Southern District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr., an attorney for the Alavi Foundation "strenuously" objected to assertions made by David Cohen, the police department's deputy commissioner of intelligence. Cohen, a 35-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who joined the NYPD at the start of 2002, is at the forefront of a motion to modify a 1985 consent decree that requires police officers to prove suspicion of criminal activity before they can investigate political groups. The NYPD claims the restrictions of the decree, known as the Handschu guidelines, prevent police officers from investigating terrorism and jeopardize the safety of New Yorkers. They contend that officers should only have to show that an investigation into a political group has a law enforcement purpose, a lower legal standard. In recent court papers intended to show why the Handschu modifications are essential, Cohen said that Alavi is "totally controlled" by the Iranian government and in 1997 gave $1.4 million to the Al-Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, whose former imam is Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman. Rahman was a spiritual leader for many of the defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and is serving a life sentence for his role in a failed plot to bomb New York City landmarks. An attorney for Alavi said in an 11-page letter that several federal judges had refuted allegations that Alavi was controlled by the Iranian government. He said the group, which was founded by the Shah of Iran in 1973, never gave money to the Al-Farouq mosque. The letter said that in 1997 and 1998, the group gave $69,000 to the Brooklyn Mosque Inc., which is across the street from the Al-Farouq mosque. Assistant Corporation Counsel Gail Donoghue, who is handling the Handschu case for the police, responded the next day with a brief letter to Judge Haight. She did admit that Cohen made a mistake in his declaration about the years in which Alavi allegedly contributed money to the Al-Farouq mosque. "The words 'in 1997' should read 'by 1992'," the letter said. It added that Cohen believed Alavi's contributions from 1988 to 1992, under the former name Mostazafan Foundation, totaled $1.4 million. The attorneys for the Handschu plaintiffs, who include the Black Panthers and Buffalo attorney Barbara Handschu, have argued that the surveillance restrictions guard First Amendment rights and do not need to be changed for the police to investigate terrorism. Judge Haight considered the request to depose Cohen at a Dec. 13 hearing, where Donoghue said Cohen could not say anything more than what he has said in documents without compromising privileged law enforcement information. She has asked Judge Haight for a protective order that would prevent Cohen's deposition. I have not idea what the true facts are in this case, but it's an illustration of the juggling act that putting antiterror operations on the police results in. The fact that the Alavi Foundation was founded by the Shah is no guarantee that it wasn't taken over by the Ayatollahs. If the Mostazafan Foundation was a false nose and moustache operation, that would indicate a sinister purpose. This sort of thing is the reason the financial war on terror doesn't make the papers, and if Cohen's allegations are true — I presume they're based on something other than just guessing, which is why the (lefty) attorneys for the putative bad guys want the sources — it's an indication of how important it is. Our guys on one side of the street, shooting it out with their guys on the other side of the street, is pretty easy to follow. One set of lawyers on one side of the room, and another set on the other side of the room, both arguing and both deposing, isn't as easy to follow. Nobody wants to see First Amendment rights evaporate, and nobody wants to see foreign agents and sympathizers financing a war against us under our noses. To my uneducated eye, "an investigation into a political group [that] has a law enforcement purpose" seems perfectly reasonable. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |