Excerpt:
Three opponents of a Brooklyn public school that teaches Arabic filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the school's founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, claiming that she had defamed them by saying they had stalked her.
The plaintiffs, Sara Springer, Irene Alter and Pamela Hall, are members of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, a group that has protested the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which opened in Boerum Hill last fall. The women, who filed the lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, are seeking punitive damages.
Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the school's principal in a firestorm of controversy in August after an article in The New York Post stated that she had "downplayed the significance" of T-shirts bearing the slogan "Intifada NYC." Ms. Almontaser said that The Post had distorted her words and that she had been forced to resign by the mayor's office.