A Washington-based rights group has sued the U.S. federal government and the FBI over alleged discrimination and racist treatment of an American Palestinian duo.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) initiated legal action against the FBI and several U.S. government agency leaders for placing the two individuals on a watch list.
The lawsuit challenges the placement of Mustafa Zeidan on the U.S. government's "no-fly list" and the confiscation of an electronic device belonging to Osama Abu Irshaid, who was interrogated by federal agents about his activism against Israel's Gaza conflict, according to CAIR.
Irshaid, who is the executive director of an organization called American Muslims for Palestine, traveled to Qatar from the U.S. in late May and returned in early June, according to the lawsuit that alleged he was forced to undergo extra screening and questioning while having his phone seized. The phone has not been returned, it was added.
"CAIR is challenging the mistreatment of these Palestinian American activists on constitutional grounds," the group said.
"Neither Dr. Abu Irshaid nor Mr. Zeidan has ever been charged or convicted of a violent crime," added the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Also named as defendants in the lawsuit were the leaders of government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zeidan lives in California and frequently visits his ailing mother in Jordan, the lawsuit said. He was not allowed to board a flight on his way to Jordan earlier this year and was told later by authorities that he was placed on the no-fly list.
The list was created in 2003 and is administered by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center.
The FBI had no comment on the lawsuit specifically but a spokesperson said its Terrorist Screening Center does not list people based on race or religion or any free-speech activity.
Human rights advocates say there has been a rise of Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian bias, anti-Arab hate and anti-Semitism in the United States since the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza last October.
Alarming U.S. incidents include the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois last October, the February stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent in Vermont in November and the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in May.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's genocidal war, on the other hand, has killed about 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while displacing nearly its entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis.
