BRA seeks to block mosque questions

The Boston Redevelopment Authority went to court yesterday to prevent four of its key officials from having to answer questions under oath about a deal in which a city-owned parcel of land was transferred to an Islamic group for construction of a mosque.

Lawyers for the city's most powerful agency argued in Suffolk Superior Court that critics of the mosque project at Roxbury Crossing had no right to depose the BRA officials about the project or obtain more documents than those already provided to the David Project, a nonprofit Jewish advocacy group.

Leaders of the David Project have questioned the BRA's deal with the Islamic Society of Boston, under which the society is building the mosque. They have also suggested the BRA is trying to keep details of the arrangement secret by blocking the release of public information.

BRA attorneys said the David Project has not agreed to pay for searching for the requested documents, including e-mails, and for copying those documents, a cost that could range from about $50,000 to $85,000.

David Project lawyers said that they have clearly stated they would pay all reasonable search and duplication costs but that the BRA had "wildly inflated" cost estimates in a continuing effort to withhold thousands of public records.

"The BRA has made a series of institutional decisions to make its public documents difficult to access," Scott P. Lewis, a lawyer representing the David Project, said at yesterday's 30-minute hearing on the BRA's motion to block his subpoenas of BRA officials and on a countermotion asking that the officials be compelled to appear for questioning.

Susan Elsbree, BRA spokeswoman, refused to comment on any aspect of the public-records dispute between the city agency and the David Project.

"This is an ongoing legal matter, and it would be inappropriate for us to try our case in the press," Elsbree said. "This matter is in litigation, and the outcome will be decided by the court."

Judge Allan van Gestel did not immediately rule on the motions.

The David Project and other organizations and individuals also have questioned the suitability of the Islamic Society to run what would be New England's largest mosque.

They are being sued for defamation by the society, which accuses them of engaging in a conspiracy to block construction of the mosque.

Lewis said the BRA has thousands of documents stored "willy-nilly" in boxes that are not labeled, a storage method he said was intended to keep the documents from being easily accessible and to increase the costs of access.

He said the questioning of the subpoenaed BRA officials will enable the David Project to understand what documents are available, and in what form, without going through massive and expensive searches of what the BRA says are more than 2,000 boxes of unindexed documents and thousands of e-mails the BRA says cannot be searched easily.

The subpoenaed BRA officials include Robert Tumposky, deputy director for management information systems; Muhammad Ali-Salaam, deputy director for special projects; Patraap Patrose, deputy director for urban design; and Kevin Morrison, the agency's general counsel.

Ali-Salaam is a central figure in the battle over the mosque because of his long association with the project and his trip to the Middle East with members of the Islamic Society leadership in 2000, during which, according to an Islamic Society publication, he helped raise funds for the project.

He also has been subpoenaed to give a deposition on Feb. 7 in a suit brought against the mosque deal by Boston resident James C. Policastro, who asserts that the arrangement between the BRA and the society violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Morrison has been questioned once by David Project lawyers, who cited his answers in court yesterday in urging Judge Van Gestel not to block the depositions and to order the BRA to take steps to protect documents and e-mails relevant to the mosque deal.

Jeffrey Robbins, general counsel for the David Project, said that Morrison's deposition to date shows that the BRA has made no serious effort to comply with public-records laws.

Samuel Tyler -- president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded watchdog group -- said that, in general, the BRA does not make information on development deals readily available. "Information from the BRA, particularly financial information, is very limited," he said.