FBI: Spy Planes Not Targeting Religious or Ethnic Groups

» Get Patch’s daily newsletter and real-time news alerts.

The FBI on Wednesday sought to quell fear and suspicion that it is targeting heavily Arab-American Dearborn after reports of more than a half dozen flights over the city and and other areas of Metro Detroit since last weekend.

Paul Abbate, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI bureau, met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, where about 40 percent of residents are Arab-American, the majority of whom are Muslims.

The meeting in the offices of the Arab American News, also attended by U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, and Dearborn City Councilman Mike Sareini, was called to discuss media reports of the FBI flyovers, sparked by a Detroit News investigation of public records.

The meeting was called to get answers for some local residents who are “very nervous about the FBI, ICE, everybody related to the government,” Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani told the Detroit Free Press.

“They’ve been harassed at borders, harassed at airports, harassed at home,” Siblani said. “They’ve been told over and over that they are a terrorist, and they are treated as such.”

In a statement, Abbate said the FBI does “not target specific communities,” nor is the agency “aware of any specific or credible threat to the Detroit metropolitan area.”

Related:

• FBI Concentrating Surveillance Flights Over Dearborn

The small plane circling Dearborn twice over the weekend was part of an investigation into a criminal complaint and not terror-related surveillance, Abbate said, according to a report in The Detroit News.

The 2010 single-engine Cessna, registered to OTV leasing of Bristow, VA, under the number N102BR, flew over Dearborn twice over the weekend, according to flightradar24.com.

The first flight was from about 7:30-9 p.m. on Saturday, when it circled the city about 19 times. The plane returned Sunday evening, flying over the Henry Ford Museum, Fairlane Green Shopping Center and surrounding neighborhoods.

The FBI said it routinely uses airplanes for specific surveillance and does not conduct mass surveillance. The agency said it doesn’t target any group or region because of ethnic or religious makeup.

After the meeting, Siblani said he and others are “very satisfied that the community is not being surveilled,” according to the Free Press.

“There is no massive surveillance of any nature,” he said. “We support whatever the FBI is doing to protect our country and our nation as long as they’re doing it according to the Constitution and under the law, and they’re targeting criminals.

“We believe they are telling the truth.”

Earlier in the day Wednesday, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan issued a stinging statement about the flyovers, reported not only by The Detroit News, but also documented by the Associated Press, which said in June that FBI was using dummy companies to secretly operate “a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cell phone surveillance technology.”

“The use of a government aircraft to profile a religious or ethnic group without probable cause is unconstitutional and harmful to the entire community in Dearborn and everywhere,” ADC-Michigan said. “These discriminatory practices breed mistrust and fear among law-abiding citizens unfairly stigmatized by such programs.

“Further, by targeting places of worship, these spying programs also disrupt the religious practices of many Arab-Americans of Muslim faith who may avoid places of worship out of fear they too will become labeled or added to a government watch list.”

Not all Muslims in Dearborn were shaken up by the flyovers.

“I’m all for any governmental activities that will make us safer,” Majed Moughni, a Dearborn attorney, told the Detroit Free Press. “If spying will lead to an arrest, so be it. We are law abiding citizens who have nothing to hide.”

______

Photo via Wikimedia/Creative Commons