US Muslim leaders Thursday condemned a federal search at the Texas offices of a Middle East Internet service provider, calling it part of an "anti-Muslim witch hunt."
Anti-terrorism agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) were part of the joint operation Wednesday that descended on the offices of InfoCom Corporation, a Texas-based Internet service provider that hosts a web portal servicing the Middle East.
The search disrupted satellite television service in the United Arab Emirates, according to reports from Dubai, cited by AFP.
"American Muslims view yesterday's action as just one of a long list of attempts by the pro-Israel lobby to intimidate and silence all those who wish to see Palestinian Muslims and Christians free themselves of a brutal apartheid-like occupation," a coalition of nearly a dozen Muslim groups said in a statement.
"We believe the genesis of this raid lies not in Washington, but in Tel Aviv."
Among the groups voicing their discontent were the American Muslim Council, American Muslims for Jerusalem and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
One of InfoCom's clients was the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television network, the coalition said, a popular Arabic news outlet frequently criticized by Israel for its reporting on the situation in the Palestinian territories.
For its part, the FBI denied the raid was any kind of “witch-hunt.”
"We were executing a search warrant as part of a criminal investigation. It had nothing to do with anti-Islamic or anti-Palestinian or anti-Middle East issues or anything like that," special agent Lori Bailey, spokeswoman for the Dallas FBI office told Reuters.
Bailey declined to specify the target of the search warrant, which is under seal in a federal court, except to say it was "one aspect of a more than two-year investigation that is ongoing." – Albawaba.com
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