Four members of the Islamic Center of Passaic County have filed a lawsuit accusing the group’s imam of wrongly using $88,000 of the organization’s money to pay legal bills in his fight to resist deportation.
The lawsuit also accuses the center’s secretary of tapping into an organization credit card for personal expenses and the center’s president of improperly using the group’s funds to pay for his health insurance and tuition for his children.
“Their demands for a full accounting have been denied, so the exact extent has not been determined yet,” said Michael DeMarco, the lawyer representing the men who filed the lawsuit, when asked the value of the alleged credit card charges, the health insurance costs and tuition payments.
But the center’s attorney, Aymen Aboushi, said the members filing the lawsuit were doing so because they became disgruntled after losing an election last year for leadership positions on the group’s board.
“We look forward to being able to expose in court these claims as frivolous and meritless,” Aboushi said. “Everything that was done was done with the consent and approval of the board and with the consent of the full membership.”
When asked if his comments meant that the Islamic Center had paid $88,000 towards Imam Mohammad Qatanani’s legal bills, Aboushi said, “We’re still investigating that part of it.”
Federal homeland security authorities are trying to have Qatanani deported on an allegation that he once had ties to Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic organization that the United States has classified as a terrorist group. Qatanani has said he never belonged to Hamas and in fact that he was part of a different organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not on the United States’ terrorist list. The deportation case has dragged on for more than six years and remains unresolved.
The four men who filed the lawsuit are Nicholas Matahen, Maher Al Badir, Mahmoud Abu Romi and Mobin Sheikh. The suit says many people in the region’s Muslim community contributed to a legal defense fund for the popular imam, but the complaint also maintains that the deportation proceedings were a “personal” matter for Qatanani and had nothing to do with the Islamic Center. The organization’s money was not supposed to pay the imam’s legal bills, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit says the center’s secretary, Mazoog Sehwail of Elmwood Park, abused his access to the group’s American Express card by using it to ring up charges for hotels, Dunkin’ Donuts, 7-Eleven, Optimum, Exxon Mobil and AAA.
The lawsuit also says that the center’s president, Nabil Abbassi, had been an employee until early 2009. The complaint says that after Abbassi left the payroll, the center improperly continued to pay for health coverage for him and his family through the end of 2011. It also says that the center wrongfully paid tuition for Abbassi’s three children during the 2010-2011 school year.
DeMarco dismissed Aboushi’s assertion that the lawsuit, which was filed Jan. 23, resulted from sour grapes over last year’s board election at the center. He said his clients were trying to stop abuses.
But Aboushi said the four men who filed the suit had been part of the board that approved some of the activities in question.
Qatanani, who was at the center on Tuesday afternoon, declined to discuss the lawsuit, referring questions to the lawyer and the board president.