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=> Shamiur Rahman: NYPD paid me to 'bait' Muslims

Shamiur Rahman: NYPD paid me to 'bait' Muslims
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Tuesday, October 23 2012, 19:24:24 (UTC)
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Shamiur Rahman: NYPD paid me to 'bait' Muslims
Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:55PM GMT

A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying incriminating things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."

Rahman, who said he plans to move to the Caribbean, said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police - and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP - he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques - known informally as "mosque crawlers" - tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.

The programs were built with unprecedented help from the CIA.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not immediately return a message seeking comment about Tuesday. He has denied widespread NYPD spying, saying police only follow leads.

In an Oct. 15 interview with the AP, Rahman said he received little training and spied on "everything and anyone." He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams. By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.

Rahman said he thought he was doing important work protecting New York City and considered himself a hero. Huffingtonpost.com

FACTS & FIGURES
The FBI in San Francisco used a public relations program billed as "mosque outreach" to collect information on the religious views and practices of Muslims in Northern California and then shared the intelligence with other government agencies, according to FBI documents obtained by civil rights groups. nbcnews.com

The Privacy Act limits sharing of personal information among government agencies and the length of time it can be retained. In this case, the information shared included religious beliefs and affiliations, which the ACLU argues is entirely out of bounds. nbcnews.com

A class-action lawsuit was brought by a group of Orange County Muslims who contended that their constitutional rights were trampled when the FBI sent an undercover informant into their midst to illegally spy on them in August. latimes.com

Such actions have led Muslim civil rights groups to wonder if their communities are being unfairly targeted in a spying game that is rigged against them. Craig Monteilh, an ex-FBI informant, says that is exactly what happens. “The way the FBI conducts their operations, it is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It’s such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It’s fixed”, he said. rawstory.com



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