Group Sues Washington County to Post Terrorist Wanted Posters on Buses

A group criticized for running purportedly anti-Islamic ads around the country has sued King County over its refusal to allow it to run a poster of wanted terrorists on the sides of Metro buses — an ad almost identical to ones pulled down earlier this summer for being insensitive to area Muslims.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and its firebrand executive director, Pamela Geller, alleged in the federal civil-rights lawsuit that the county violated the First Amendment last month when it refused to run the posters, even though it had allowed the local FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) to post the ads in June.

The FBI posters were part of the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program and bore the title, “The Faces of Global Terrorism.” It showed pictures of 16 wanted international terrorists — all with Islamic or Middle Eastern names — and the promise of a reward up to $25 million for information that stops a terrorist.

The posters were pulled down voluntarily by the JTTF after area lslamic leaders complained that they stereotyped Muslims as terrorists.