A judge has ruled Indiana prison officials need to provide 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ahmad Ajaj with halal meals that conform to his Muslim beliefs
A Muslim man serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing has been granted access to halal meals after he sued the prison for not accommodating his religious beliefs.
US District Judge R Brooke Jackson issued an order Friday requiring prison officials to continue providing Ahmad Ajaj with halal meals, but said they do not need to exert extra efforts for him to access to an imam.
Ajaj started getting halal meals on the eve of his trial last month after he was transferred from a prison in Colorado to Terre Haute, Indiana.
He objected to attending classes with the Indiana prison’s imam because he believes the cleric is an adherent of Sufism, Islam’s mystical strain.
Jackson said it doesn’t violate Ajaj’s religious rights to meet with someone with different views and that he still could have phone or email contact with another imam.
Ajaj started getting halal meals on the eve of his trial last month after he was transferred from a prison in Colorado to Terre Haute, Indiana (pictured)
Ajaj was sentenced in 1999 to more than 114 years in prison for his role in the blast in an underground parking garage on February 26, 1993, that killed six people, one of them who was pregnant.
It injured more than 1,000 and forced an estimated 50,000 to flee the trade center’s twin towers in a scene of smoke, fear and confusion that would be mirrored and magnified on September 11, 2001.
In late August Ajaj filed a lawsuit accusing federal prison officials, particularly staff at the Administrative Maximum, or ADX, facility in Florence, of failing to provide food meeting Ajaj’s belief that all animals used for food must be fed, raised and slaughtered according to Islamic law.
The lawsuit said Ajaj considered vegetarian and Kosher meals inadequate.
The suit also said Ajaj went months without being visited by an imam, a term for an Islamic religious leader, contracted to counsel prisoners at the Colorado facility.
Since moving to the Indiana facility, he began participating in a faith-based program that includes regular classes with an imam.
But the imam who works with Muslim inmates in the program belongs to another denomination of the faith.
Ajaj’s attorneys argued that even listening to someone speak about views contrary to his own violate the inmate’s religious rights.
The lawsuit claims that both issues violate Ajaj’s rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The law, approved by Congress in 1993, was intended to limit the federal government’s ability to infringe on someone’s sincere religious beliefs.
Attorneys for the government argued that neither issue substantially limited Ajaj’s ability to practice his faith and did not violate the law.
Ajaj was sentenced in 1999 to more than 114 years in prison for his role in the blast in an underground parking garage on February 26, 1993. A courtroom sketch is pictured above
Jeffrey Cheeks, a business administrator at the Terre Haute facility, testified that he tried but could not find a vendor able to meet all of Ajaj’s conditions.
Cheeks said he ordered three months’ worth of meals for Ajaj from an existing government supplier at the direction of the prison’s warden after the convict complained in August.
On August 28, Ajaj’s attorneys asked Jackson to order prison officials to continue providing those meals.
Jackson gave no firm sense of his leanings. But he was clearly frustrated by the quick fix that came days before the trial opened.
‘Something that they couldn’t do, or wouldn’t do, for three years was done in 48 hours,’ Jackson said to an attorney for the government.
‘Now, what confidence does that give the court that they won’t change it in the future?’
Jackson seemed less swayed by Ajaj’s attorneys’ request for a court order letting him participate in the Indiana prison’s faith-based program without attending the current imam’s classes.
Jackson suggested that would give Ajaj preferential treatment over other inmates, who must attend classes with leaders of their own faith to stay in the program.