A federal judge in San Francisco ruled today that the Bush administration illegally wiretapped phone calls of a now-defunct Islamic charity in 2004 without obtaining a warrant. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker granted a summary judgment to the former Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation of Ashland, Ore., and said the group can now file a request for financial compensation.
The foundation, which was the American branch of an Islamic charity, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2004.
The wiretapping of phone calls between two of the foundation's American lawyers and an Al-Haramain official in Saudi Arabia was carried out by the Bush Administration as part of its anti-terrorist program.
The group claimed that U.S. officials violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by eavesdropping on the phone calls without obtaining a warrant.
Justice Department argued the case should be dismissed because it could endanger national security, but Walker ruled in an earlier decision that the procedures established under the surveillance law trumped the national security argument.
Walker said the foundation presented adequate evidence from public documents and statements by FBI and Treasury officials to show that the wiretapping appeared to have happened, and that government lawyers presented no evidence to refute the claim that the eavesdropping was done without a warrant.
Therefore, the judge said, the government "must be deemed to have admitted that no warrant existed."
A Justice Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but the ruling is likely to be appealed.
