US government sued for alleged discrimination against Palestinian Americans

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Muslim rights group filed a lawsuit on Monday against the FBI and leaders of other U.S. government agencies over what it called a discriminatory and racist placement of two Palestinian Americans on a watch list.

The lawsuit alleges the placement of one Palestinian American, Mustafa Zeidan, on the U.S. government’s “no-fly list” and the seizure of an electronic device belonging to another Palestinian American, Osama Abu Irshaid, while federal agents were questioning him about his activities against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said.

Irshaid, who is executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, traveled to Qatar from the U.S. in late May and returned in early June, according to the lawsuit, which claims he was forced to undergo additional screening and questioning while his phone was confiscated. The phone was not returned, it added.

“CAIR challenges the mistreatment of Palestinian-American activists on constitutional grounds,” the group said in a statement.

“Neither Dr. Abu Irshaid nor Mr. Zeidan have ever been charged or convicted of a crime of violence,” the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, said.

The lawsuit also names leaders of government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, as defendants. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zeidan lives in California and often visits his sick mother in Jordan, the lawsuit says. He was prevented from boarding a flight to Jordan earlier this year, and authorities later told him he had been placed on a no-fly list.

The list was created in 2003 and is administered by the FBI’s Terrorist Control Center.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not comment specifically on the lawsuit, but a spokesman said the Terrorist Monitoring Center does not create lists of individuals based on race, religion or any free speech activities.

Human rights activists say there has been a rise in Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian prejudice, Arab hatred and anti-Semitism in the United States since the start of the Gaza war last October.

Alarming incidents in the U.S. include the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American in Illinois last October, the stabbing of a Palestinian-American in Texas in February, the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont in November and the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian-American girl in May.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict came on October 7, when the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli estimates.

The Gaza Health Ministry said that since then, Israeli military assaults on the Hamas-ruled enclave have killed some 40,000 Palestinians and displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million, triggering a hunger crisis and accusations of genocide that Israel denies.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)