03 August 2008
RIYADH: In yet another blow to the American terrorist surveillance program, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (AHIF) has refiled a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court accusing the Bush administration of illegal wiretapping.


The suit follows the recent dismissal by a US court of the original lawsuit filed by the Oregon-based American branch of the now-defunct AHIF, which was declared a terrorist organization by the US Treasury Department in 2004.


"The refiling of the suit has asserted that the Bush administration had circumvented the US Constitution by authorizing wiretaps," M. Wendell Belew, president of the Friends of Charities Association (FOCA), said yesterday.


Belew added that the AHIF has gone back to court, accusing the Bush administration of intercepting phone calls between AHIF's Saudi directors and two of their US-based lawyers.


Although no future hearings have been set yet, the new suit has emboldened the morale and efforts of AHIF officials, their lawyers and FOCA office bearers. Belew also spoke about systematic persecution of Islamic charities, while strongly condemning the new US Treasury Department action against the Indonesian and Filipino branches of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) for "raising funds" for Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

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