David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger
NEWARK — Muslim leaders, students and business owners gathered at Rutgers-Newark today to publicly decry the NYPD’s covert surveillance in Newark, even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg left open the possibility that his officers are still conducting secret operations.
“As Americans, the Muslim community feels betrayed because of this illegal and unconstitutional surveillance that’s being conducted and we’re here to put a human face on it,” Nadia Kahf, chairwoman of New Jersey’s Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a news conference outside the campus’s Paul Robeson Campus Center.
The Associated Press reported this week that in 2007 the New York Police Department conducted blanket surveillance of restaurants, shops, mosques and Muslim centers based solely on the institutions’ association with the Islamic faith.
In his weekly radio show, Bloomberg offered a full-throated defense of the police department, but he ducked an inquiry into whether the department was still conducting surveillance.
“We just cannot let our guard down again,” Bloomberg told WOR radio’s John Gambling. “We cannot slacken our vigilance. The threat was real. The threat is real. The threat is not going away.”
When Gambling asked whether the NYPD was still conducting operations similar to the one in Newark, Bloomberg responded: “Let me be careful how I phrase it. We have not let down our guard. We take the threats of today just as seriously as the threats of September 12, 2001.”
Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio said he is not aware of a continued NYPD presence in Newark.
“To my knowledge, no there’s not,” DeMaio said. He also responded to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne’s assertion that Newark’s police department was briefed after their New York counterparts concluded their 2007 operation.
“I would just be curious as to who was briefed. Because from what I have from our intelligence unit, no one in our intelligence unit was briefed,” DeMaio said, adding, “No one in our intelligence unit was given a copy of that document.”
Amid the controversy over who knew what and when, leaders from the Muslim community today focused attention back on those targeted by the probe, comparing the NYPD’s tactics with those of the Nazis.
“We thought that the world had learned its lesson in 1933 Germany,” said Mohamed El Filali, executive director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County. “People were spied on just because of their religion, and we knew exactly what other human beings can do — how they can vilify a group of people based on their ethnicity and we sadly see it happening right now.”
Bloomberg maintained New York police were legally justified in all of their actions and were in fact protecting “the entire region.”
Leland Moore, a spokesman for New Jersey’s Attorney General’s Office, said today that the office would continue to gather information about the NYPD program, and “that information will guide us in determining appropriate next steps.”
Despite Bloomberg’s cryptic comments and the potential erosion of civil liberties, members of the group assembled at Rutgers said they were trying to maintain a sense of humor.
“Sometimes we joke about it, we feel sorry for the guy who’s recording us because we’re talking about, like, girls, you know?” said Mohamed Gadalla, 20, who is studying philosophy at Rutgers.
When asked whether his mosque had been under surveillance, El filali gave a wry chuckle.
“The joke is whenever our tape of the sermon gets lost or mistaped, we say we should call the FBI to get the other copy,” he said.
Related coverage:
• Richard Codey’s orders opened N.J. to NYPD spying
• NYPD spying on N.J. Muslims leads to calls for state Attorney General investigation
• Sen. Menendez asks for federal inquiry into NYPD’s spying on Muslims in N.J.
• Editorial:NYPD probe of N.J. Muslims an insidious betrayal
• Opinion: NYPD should not infringe on particular group’s freedoms, including Muslims
• Newark mayor Booker says he would have never allowed NYPD to spy on city’s Muslims
• Report: Newark police allowed NYPD to spy on Muslims, build secret files
• Rutgers University among schools probed by NYPD in secret Muslim surveillance
• N.J. Muslims ask Gov. Christie to investigate NYPD monitoring
