A US federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit dealing with the New York police surveillance on Muslims on the pretext of fighting terrorism.
According to reports, based on the Tuesday ruling in the Philadelphia court, Muslim groups can pursue a civil rights lawsuit which accuses the NYPD of conducting secret surveillance on Muslims without suspicion of criminal activity.
The plaintiffs in the case, including Muslim religious leaders, business owners, and students, sued the NYPD in 2012, arguing the surveillance not only subjected them to discrimination but also threatened their careers and caused them to stop attending religious services.
US district court in Newark, New Jersey, threw out the case in February 2014 after the city had persuasively claimed that the surveillance was an anti-terrorism, not an anti-Muslim program.
In dismissing the lawsuit, US District Judge William Martini concluded at the time that the police could not keep watch on terrorist activities
According to a Pew Research Center poll, 55 percent of American Muslims believe the US government's anti-terrorism policies have singled them out for increased surveillance and monitoring after a terrorist attack against the World Trade Center complex in New York on September 11, 2001.
source : irib
