Iqbal spying on Muslims went back to 2008
Romin Iqbal, a former leader of a Columbus Muslim advocacy group, had been sending confidential information to an anti-muslim group since at least 2008, national Council on American-islamic Relations (CAIR) officials said Thursday morning.
During a media call, the national officials showed emails from Iqbal to Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). Officials said Iqbal has been sharing information consistently since 2008 and maybe before.
Iqbal, 45, was fired on Tuesday from his role as the executive director of the CAIR-OHIO office, which covers Columbus and Cincinnati. He worked out of the Columbus office, in Hilliard, since 2006 and was its executive di
rector since 2018.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the deputy director of CAIR’S national office in Washington, D.C., showed screenshots of emails from Iqbal to Emerson regarding national meetings of CAIR.
CAIR, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization with offices across the country, got information last year about informants in different Muslim organizations, including one in their own, working with IPT. But it took months to verify the information and make sure no one was being framed, officials said.
In the spring, CAIR got the name of Iqbal, Mitchell said, and hired an outside law firm and investigator to look at the evidence and make sure it was real.
Lena Masri, an attorney representing CAIR national and CAIR-OHIO, said it was only Iqbal and that “the investigator definitively ruled out another mole” within CAIR.
IPT had insiders within multiple Muslim organizations, however, and was collaborating with the Israeli government, Mitchell said, though there still are many unanswered questions.
“We alleged these things publicly ... and Emerson has not denied these allegations,” Mitchell said. “That is telling. Neither has Mr. Iqbal. That’s because everything we said is true. This happened.
“This is shocking to us, but it’s not truly surprising,” Mitchell continued. “Civil rights groups have been targeted and infiltrated for decades.”
Mitchell also showed emails from Emerson to his staff, in which he used profanity against them and expressed dismay that they had not created enough Islamophobic content. Mitchell did not reveal the source, but said it is understandable that there might be a disgruntled employee who was treated this way.
CAIR also showed evidence in the form of email screenshots that indicated that the anti-muslim group had collaborated with Israeli intelligence in the office of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nihad Awad, the national director of CAIR, called on the U.S. government to take action and protect the Muslim American community against hate groups and foreign influence.
“A foreign government using an American organization to spy on an American organization and the Muslim community should be alarming, should be a sign of concern to the government, to the American public and also to any civil rights organization that acts and performs its works under the law,” he said.
Iqbal wasn’t the only Muslim advocate who was working for an anti-muslim group, the national office announced on Thursday. It found evidence that there were two other moles and that about a dozen Muslim organizations were spied on at some point since 2010, Mitchell said.
Iqbal, of Dublin, referred requests for comment to his attorney, David H. Thomas, a partner at Taft Law’s Compliance, Investigations and White Collar Defense practice group based in Downtown Columbus, who said he has no comment on the allegations against his client.
Iqbal got his law degree from Ohio State University. He was fined $225 by the Ohio Supreme Court in October 2020 for not completing required continuing legal education and attorney registration requirements during 2018 and 2019, according to the court’s website.
An outspoken voice against Islamophobia during his time with CAIR-OHIO, Iqbal often appeared at news conferences with other area advocacy groups. But he confessed to secretly working with IPT after he was confronted with evidence, according to CAIR.
CAIR-OHIO isn’t sure what Iqbal’s motive may have been and neither is CAIR’S national organization, but CAIROHIO officials said his efforts were carried out in a “planned and purposeful” manner over the course of years.
Columbus office staff members also found a package with AR-15 rifle materials on Monday in its office and then discovered that they had been purchased using a CAIR credit card that only Iqbal had had access to, said Whitney Siddiqi, community affairs director for CAIROHIO. She said they cannot confirm who purchased the weapon parts, though.
CAIR-OHIO reported the leaks, and the purchase and presence of the weapon parts to the FBI and the Hilliard Division of Police.
On Thursday afternoon, the Hilliard police released a statement saying that they are not pursuing a criminal investigation into the matter due to the information available after discussions with CAIR staff.
“We will continue to serve as a resource for the organization as it continues its own internal investigation into the matter,” the statement said. “Although there have been no direct or indirect threats made against CAIR, it’s a priority to ensure all our residents feel safe.”
Angie Plummer, executive director of Columbus-based refugee resettlement agency Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS), has worked with Iqbal for years.
Plummer said she feels betrayed and assumed Iqbal and she were on the same mission to try and root out Islamophobia.
“I just can’t make sense of it,” she said. “I wish there were some explanation that would make it make sense.”
Plummer’s agency primarily worked with CAIR-OHIO and Iqbal when former President Donald Trump was working to stop Muslim refugees from being resettled in the United States.
In 2019, Iqbal made an impassioned plea for the bans on travel from Muslimmajority countries to be lifted, as they were separating local families.
“It’s really something affecting human beings,” Iqbal said at the time. “It’s a very, very sad situation for a lot of people.”
“In the Supreme Court hearings they didn’t demonstrate what exactly is the issue with security for these countries and they still have not,” he said in 2019. “This ban is not making anybody safer.”
After a local Muslim family was threatened near Easton Town Center in January 2020, Iqbal and CAIR-OHIO called for the perpetrator to be prosecuted.
“The alleged perpetrator needs to be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for this racist and xenophobic attack,” Iqbal said at the time.
Durya Nadeem-khan, 21, of Dublin, interned for CAIR-OHIO during this past summer. She said her initial reaction was shock after working with Iqbal and others at CAIR for six weeks.
“Romin was the type of person who was present at all interfaith events or just anything where a positive image of American Muslims are being presented,” Nadeem-khan said. “That’s why I was shocked. He was seen as a leader in community.”
Dispatch Reporters Laura Bischoff and Bethany Bruner contributed to this article. dking@dispatch.com @Danaeking