The complaint by three Muslims, who accuse the US federal police of spying on them because of their religion after the 9/11 attacks, appeared Monday (November 8) to place the US Supreme Court in a difficult choice.
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While being receptive to the complainants' arguments, the Nine Wise Men appeared concerned not to render a decision that could facilitate the disclosure of sensitive information for national security. "
What we may or may not say about state secrets will have ramifications far beyond
" this case, said Conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett during the two-hour hearing.
Concretely, three residents of California assure that the FBI introduced, in 2006 and 2007, an informant in their mosque to collect information on the faithful. This man, "
who had a criminal record, presented himself as a convert eager to revisit his Franco-Algerian roots
," said before the hearing Ahilan Arulanantham, lawyer for the powerful association for the defense of civil rights ACLU, which supports the complainants.
The police "
asked him to collect as much information as possible about the members of this community: phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and to secretly record conversations,
" the lawyer added during the interview. a presentation to the press of the dossier. "
She asked him to incite violence, but he scared people so much with his comments about the bombings, the jihad, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that they denounced him to the police
», Said Ahilan Arulanantham.
After this incident, he had an argument with agents and decided to go public with his actions as a paid FBI informant, according to the lawyer.
The imam and two faithful then filed a complaint against the FBI for infringement of religious freedom and discrimination.
The Ministry of Justice replied that it had started this monitoring program for objective reasons, and not because these people were Muslims.
He, however, sheltered behind state secrecy to refuse to detail these reasons and asked the courts to dismiss the complaint.
"A huge security problem"
A lower court ruled in favor of the state, but an appeals court ruled that the court should have examined the material protected by secrecy behind closed doors. The highest American court then agreed to intervene to decide a sensitive question: can a court have access to classified elements to judge the merits of a complaint calling into question the legality of a program? state surveillance?
During the exchanges, several magistrates underlined the risks for national security of a positive answer: "to
manage top-secret information in the courts of the country would create a huge security problem, most courts not being equipped to deal with sensitive information
”, underlined the conservative judge Samuel Alito.
"
This is not the kind of information we want to see circulating, not even within the White House,
" added his colleague Brett Kavanaugh.
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But others seemed embarrassed at the idea of giving the state complete carte blanche.
The plaintiffs seem well "to
have been the subject of an illegal surveillance
", noted in particular the progressive judge Sonia Sotomayor, worried that they could not obtain justice.
Conservative judge Neil Gorsuch said it was “
problematic
” that the authorities were using state secrecy as an “
offensive weapon
” in order to get the complaint closed.
"
There has to be a way for the court to see this information and decide what to do,
" added the dean of the court, Stephen Breyer.
The court is due to render its decision by June 2022.