NSA, FBI spied on Muslim-American leaders: report

WASHINGTON D.C.

Prominent Muslim-Americans including a former U.S. congressional candidate, civil rights activists, lawyers and academics have had their emails monitored on by the National Security Agency and FBI, according to whistle-blowing website The Intercept.

In a report by journalists Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain published Wednesday, documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden listed 7,485 email addresses which were allegedly monitored between 2002 and 2008.

Among them were some belonging to Faisal Gill, a long-serving Republican Party operative and former candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.

The email addresses of Nihad Awad, the executive director of the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Agha Saeed, a former California State University political science professor who advocates on Palestinian human rights and Muslim civil liberties causes, were also targeted.

Iranian-American Hooshang Amirahmadi, a professor of International Relations professor at Rutgers University, and prominent lawyer Asim Ghafoor also appeared on an NSA spreadsheet known as "FISA recap" -- short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to The Intercept.

The five Americans have all led high-profile, publicly exemplary lives and deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, the website reported.

The procedures carried out under the law are intended to target terrorists and foreign spies and must be subject to the oversight of a judge.

Corey Saylor, the media representative of the Council on American Islamic Relations, told the Anadolu Agency that the U.S. leadership had not commented on the allegations.

Saylor said: "We have a few legal options in mind concerning the case.

"A broad-based coalition of 45 organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, has issued a letter addressed to President Barack Obama calling for transparent investigations into surveillance practices carried out on American Muslims."

"Unfortunately the side effects are many within the Muslim community, as it does make them afraid to engage in political speech," he added.

He said that although the surveillance of Council on American-Islamic Relations director Nihad Awad appeared to have been terminated according to the report, it was unclear whether that was actually the case.

The Intercept reported it has carried out a three-month investigation which revealed the system for authorizing NSA surveillance gave the U.S. government a broad scope for spying on U.S. citizens.

The report is the latest in a series of exposes based on material from former U.S. spy Snowden, who has shared classified material on top-secret NSA programs including the PRISM surveillance program with the U.K.'s The Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post in the U.S., both of whom have published exposes since June 2013.

Snowden has disclosed hundreds of wiretappings and surveillance operations carried out by American intelligence services on political leaders and state officials around the world including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He is currently looking to renew his visa in Russia.

www.aa.com.tr/en