Religious freedom case against U.S. prison system goes to trial
A trial began Monday in Denver U.S. District Court in which a man serving a 114-year sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings is suing the United States and the Federal Bureau of Prisons for violating his religious freedoms.
In his 2015 civil lawsuit, Ahmad Ajaj also sued three former wardens of the U.S. Penitentiary Maximum Security Prison in Florence (ADX), also called the Alcatraz of the Rockies, two chaplains and numerous health employees.
The bench trial began with opening statements Monday before Judge R. Brooke Jackson.
Ajaj is one of several terrorists convicted in the Feb. 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing in which six people were killed and more than 1,000 people injured. Ajaj had attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to learn how to construct a bomb. He came to the U.S. seeking political asylum after claiming the Israeli government tortured him, according to a 1998 report of U.S. Congressional hearings. The bomb was loaded into a Ryder truck.
Defendants claimed in a 2015 motion to dismiss the lawsuit that prison authorities had already satisfied religious requirements, including providing him with medications at 4 a.m., or before sunrise, during Ramadan, so that he could meet fasting requirements of the religious holiday.
“The Court should dismiss this case as moot, because plaintiff has already received the relief requested in his complaint,” the motion said. But Judge Jackson declined to dismiss the case.
Ajaj claims that the federal prison violated his rights according to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed the same year he helped engineer the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City.
Ajaj is seeking punitive damages and compensatory damages. He is represented by the student law office of the University of Denver’s College of Law. Although the lawsuit does not specify how much Ajaj is seeking, he previously requested $130,000 for injuries during the Ramadan of 2014 alone.
The prison failed to provide Ajaj, a devout Sunni Muslim, with medications for back pain and depression before sunrise on Ramadan and Sunnah religious holidays so he could fast in observance of one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the lawsuit says.
Because he is unable to fulfill another pillar of Islam — the Hajj, a mandated pilgrimage to Mecca — he believes he must participate in other forms of worship, including additional fasts to earn rewards and blessing from Allah, the lawsuit says.
“Throughout his incarceration, Mr. Ajaj has been subject to relentless discriminatory practices by Bureau of Prison staff because of his race and religion,” the lawsuit says.
Prison staff deliberately mocked and offended him during weekly Islamic programming by showing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed and nude men and women performing sexual acts, the lawsuit says. Other times, prison staff tossed the Holy Qu’ran in the trash, it says.
“Mr. Ajaj must choose between obtaining his prescribed medications and observing religious fasts; he must choose between eating and consuming a religiously forbidden diet; and he must choose between receiving a disciplinary action and participating in group prayer,” the lawsuit says. “Finally, defendants’ refusal to provide regular access to an Imam in violation of their own policy gives Mr. Ajaj no choice but to forego religious guidance.”
Federal prison officials abruptly placed Ajaj in administrative segregation on Sept. 11, 2001, the date of the second terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the lawsuit says.
Ajaj meticulously recorded scores of grievances claiming he was denied the right to worship his faith, the lawsuit says.
As a consequence of being denied his medications before fasting. he suffered severe pain, numbness, weakness, stiffness, severe night sweating, restlessness, irritability, agitation, dizziness and mood and emotional problems, the lawsuit says.