By Michael Matza
The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — Seeking to have their names stricken from the U.S. government's antiterrorist watch list, a Schuylkill County Muslim man and his wife filed suit yesterday against a host of federal agencies.

Erich Scherfen, 37, and his wife, Rubina Tareen, 50, say they were unfairly added to the million-name Terrorist Screening Database without formal notification or any opportunity to clear their names.

The suit names the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Transportation Security Administration, and related agencies.

Describing the situation as "Kafkaesque" and the electronic database as "a black hole," the couple say they were targeted and falsely stigmatized because of their religion.

American-born Scherfen is a commercial pilot and combat veteran of the 1991 Gulf War who converted to Islam in 1996. Tareen, a naturalized U.S. citizen, emigrated from Pakistan when she was 17. She has a business selling books about Islam through her Web site and at conferences.

Neither has a criminal record or ties to terrorist activity, say lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the firm Saul Ewing, which represent the couple.

"Nonetheless," according to the civil-rights complaint that seeks to have Scherfen's and Tareen's names expunged, "they have both been repeatedly subjected to humiliating questioning, searches, and detention for hours when they attempt to fly or cross the border."

Scherfen said he learned he was on the list from a gate agent before flying from Harrisburg to San Francisco in September 2006.

For him, the listing is more than an inconvenience. It jeopardizes his career.

Scherfen has worked for the last year as a pilot for a regional airline that subcontracts with United Express and US Airways Express, among others.

But he was banned from piloting in April and put on administrative leave after his employer told him his name appeared on a TSA no-fly list. Suspended without pay, he is scheduled to be terminated Sept. 1 unless U.S. District Court in Harrisburg intervenes.

The lawsuit states that Scherfen and Tareen have sought to clear their names through inquiries to the Department of Homeland Security's "Traveler Redress Inquiry Program" but that the promised control numbers to track the matter were never delivered.

Lawyers for the couple say the screening database - compiled from about a dozen government watch lists - is rife with misinformation and cloaked in secrecy. A March 2008 audit of the watch-list process by the Justice Department's inspector general found the need for better controls in how names got on and off the list.

A Justice Department statement said: "We are currently reviewing the complaint and will respond appropriately. For both national security and personal privacy reasons, the Terrorist Screening Center does not confirm or deny the existence of any names in the Terrorist Screening Database."

Lawyers for the couple said it was enormously difficult to get confirmation about whether names are on the list, much less challenge them.

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