WASHINGTON, May 31: Fourteen individuals and nine organizations, all represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, have filed requests under the US Freedom of Information Act, seeking any investigative files the FBI may have about them.

The ACLU also has filed a separate request for information on FBI investigations, particularly about Muslim individuals and organizations. Although most of the requests were filed in St Louis, ACLU affiliates and branches in Rhode Island, Idaho and Kentucky also have filed similar requests.

The complainants claim that the FBI is carrying out unwarranted investigations for religious or political reasons. Among others who filed the information requests are peace activist Bill Ramsey, peace activist and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein and American Muslim magazine editor Sheila Musaji.

Organizations include the St Louis Instead of War Coalition, which opposed the Iraq invasion, the Alliance for Democracy, which advocates workers’ rights and environmental issues, and the Council on American-Islamic relations.

The ACLU says a series of FBI inquiries across the country shows that the agency has sunk back into the kind of political monitoring it did in the 1960s and 1970s. The conduct of the FBI is ‘eerily Reminiscent’ of the days of J. Edgar Hoover, its controversial first director, said Denise Lieberman, legal director for the ACLU affiliate in St Louis.

She said FBI was conducting investigations based on the groups’ political activities or their religious affiliations.