ROME, GA -- South Asian convenience store operators attended a court hearing yesterday at the U.S. District Court in Rome, GA, to protest what they say is unfair treatment in the sting operation "Operation Meth Merchant."

In June, 49 people were charged in the federal sting operation, with indictments accusing clerks and store owners with knowingly selling ingredients used to make methamphetamines.

The majority of defendants (44 of 49) are of South Asian descent and many of them happen to share the last name, Patel.

In the "Meth Merchant" sting, which began in early 2004, informants, most of whom were Caucasian, were sent into stores in northwest Georgia to purchase large amounts of products that are used as ingredients to manufacture methamphetamine, including cold and allergy medicines containing pseudoephedrine, cooking fuel and matches. In many of these cases, the informants also communicated, in slang terms, why they were purchasing the products, reporots Rome News.

However, some groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU), are crying foul. The ACLU argues that several defendants were not even in the country at the time they are accused of illegally selling the ingredients and that informants used obscure drug slang that clerks were not likely to understand, reports the Associated Press.

"We are not coming from a criminal background," Upendra Patel, president of Georgia's Asian-American Convenience Store Association, told the AP. "We do not know what this drug is about."

In one case, an informant told a store clerk that he wanted supplies to "finish up a cook," which is drug slang for making meth, McCracken Poston, an attorney for one of the accused companies, told the AP.

"(T)hey're assuming that (the clerks) know what it means. I think in most cases they had no idea," said Poston.