JUDGE COLLEEN KOLLAR-KOTELLY…RULING IN FAVOR OF CAIR….
Judge orders: Return ‘Muslim Mafia’ docs
Incriminating material obtained in probe of CAIR’s connection to Islamic terrorism
A Saudi-financed Muslim nonprofit group, which the FBI has tied to terror, scored a victory in its legal jihad to veil the public from viewing damning documents about its funding of an imprisoned cop killer, advocating for Muslim men to “lightly” beat their wives and strategizing to influence congressional committees on law enforcement and national security.
CAIR’s national headquarters, three blocks from the U.S. Capitol
A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday ordered a co-author of the book “Muslim Mafia” and his son to return internal documents, recordings and records obtained in a six-month undercover operation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that presented further evidence of the D.C.-based group’s ties to terrorism.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted CAIR’s request for a temporary restraining order barring P. David Gaubatz and his son, Chris Gaubatz, from further use or publication of the material and demanding that they return it to the Muslim group’s lawyers by midnight Nov. 18.
CAIR wields litigation like a sword—aggressively pressing civil action against any critic—once even advocating for suit against citizens who reported suspicious activity on an airplane. WorldNetDaily has rallied readers to the aid of the Gaubatzes.
“WND has set up a legal defense fund, to which you can contribute either online, by phone (with a credit card), or by mailing a check,” petitioned David Kupelian, vice president and managing editor of WND. “Won’t you please help us stand strong behind these brave Americans? Truly, they are fighting this war on your behalf.”
Judge Kollar-Kotelly – who as head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made several controversial decisions against the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policies – was criticized recently by many security experts for ruling against the military’s designation of a Guantanamo detainee as an enemy combatant, allowing the Obama administration to send him home.
But Daniel Horowitz, one of the attorneys representing the Gaubatzes, said it’s important to look at both sides of the judge.
“She is extremely intelligent and a strong supporter of the First Amendment,” he said.
CAIR’s restraining order accompanied a lawsuit in which the Islamic group alleged Chris Gaubatz, who served as an unpaid volunteer for CAIR, obtained access to the group’s property under false pretenses and removed the internal documents and made recordings of officials and employees “without any consent or authorization and in violation of his contractual, fiduciary and other legal obligations to CAIR.”
David Gaubatz told WND that CAIR’s legal moves have been anticipated, and some of the court’s order already has been fulfilled as material has been turned over to law enforcement officials.
“I do look forward to bringing all the evidence to court,” he said. “Courts are a two-way system.”
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad shakes hands with intern Chris Gaubatz, aka David Marshall, at CAIR’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 2008
Gaubatz contended the research described in his book “was conducted professionally and legally.”
“CAIR executives know this, and I can tell the American people that since I have worked with CAIR executives personally – in law enforcement training in Texas – executives such as Nihad Awad, Ibrahim Hooper and (North Carolina state) Senator Larry Shaw are fighting amongst themselves, because they know everything mentioned in ‘Muslim Mafia’ is true.
“The last thing they want is more evidence of their ties to terrorists before our courts,” Gaubatz said.
Gaubatz told WND yesterday the research was “funded by a high profile U.S. organization with very close ties to senior law enforcement and U.S. government officials.”
Gaubatz said he cannot name the group now, but noted it is not SANE, the Society of Americans for National Existence, as widely believed.
“This organization is very professional, and every step of the research was coordinated with their legal team and senior personnel,” he said. “From the very onset of the research, our researchers observed intelligence in CAIR documents which appeared to be national security concerns.”
CAIR is seeking punitive damages for trespass, breach of contract, conversion and breach of fiduciary duty.
In Gaubatz’s book, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” published by WND Books, he and co-author Paul Sperry present first-hand evidence CAIR is acting as a front for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate the American system and help pave the way for Saudi-style Islamic law to rule the U.S.
In the lawsuit, however, CAIR, a self-described Muslim civil-rights group, does not defend itself against the book’s claims.
The FBI cut off ties to CAIR in January after the group was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas, the largest terrorism-finance case in U.S. history. Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and other senators have called for a government-wide ban on CAIR.
‘Wall of separation’
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
In July, Kollar-Kotelly ruled a Kuwaiti detainee at Guantanamo captured in Afghanistan in 2002, Khalid Al Mutairi, had been unlawfully detained as an enemy combatant. The habeas corpus ruling led to the Obama administration’s decision in October to transfer Al Mutairi to his home country.
Kollar-Kotelly, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by President Clinton in 1997, was chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FISA court, from 2002 until this year.
She was among the judges who moved to rebuild the “wall of separation” between criminal investigators and intelligence agents cited by the 9/11 commission as a factor in the failure to detect the 9/11 plot, notes counter-terrorism expert and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy. The rebuilding effort, however, was overruled by the FISA Court of Review in 2002.
Kollar-Kotelly also was a chief critic of the Bush administration’s warrantless-surveillance program that targeted communications between terrorists in the U.S. and abroad. In 2005, she ruled enemy combatants were entitled to counsel, at taxpayers’ expense, to challenge their detention.
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