DALLAS--An 80-strong U.S. terrorism task force raided the Texas-based host of Arabic Web sites, including that of the Arab world's leading independent news channel, prompting charges Thursday of an "anti-Muslim witch hunt."
But the FBI, which took part in the raid Wednesday at privately held InfoCom in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, denied any anti-Arab bias and said it was executing an unspecified federal search warrant.
InfoCom's owners said the raid resulted in a temporary shutdown of Web sites it hosts for about 500 customers, including that run by Al-Jazeera television and the newspaper Al-Sharq, both based in the Gulf state of Qatar. Al-Jazeera is a major regional news source for Arabic speakers. Often dubbed "the Arab CNN," it has emerged as a major force in a region where most broadcasters operate under direct state control.
The Web sites were shut down while about 80 agents copied information from InfoCom's Internet servers, said Ghassan Elashi, brother of owner Bayan Elashi.
Elashi said InfoCom was cooperating with investigators and had nothing to hide.
But the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington D.C.-based group, called the search "an anti-Muslim witch hunt promoted by the pro-Israel lobby in America."
InfoCom's owners said the Council and other Islamic organizations plan a news conference later Thursday.
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," said special agent Lori Bailey, spokeswoman for the Dallas FBI office.
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."
The search was conducted by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, a Multi-agency federal and local grouping which includes the FBI, Secret Service and the U.S. Customs Service. It also includes the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, an arm of the Treasury Department empowered to freeze or seize the assets of individuals or organizations that have been designated by the government as terrorist.