Two Somalian-American women, Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, have been charged with providing money to Al-Shabaab from Somalia. Ali has now been charged with contempt of court and jailed for refusing stand for the judge., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
US experts slam FBI tactic luring men to commit terror acts
Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:46PM
The FBI use of ‘confidential informants’ to lure young Muslim men into committing an act of terror has been censured by counter-terrorism and legal experts in the US.
Since 2001, investigators from New York's Joint Terrorism Task Force have increasingly utilized “confidential informants” to entrap and then arrest potential terror suspects before they actually commit any harm.
The latest case involved a 21-year-old Bangladeshi student Quazi Mohammed Nafis, who had no verifiable connections with the shadowy terrorist group al-Qaeda and no funding source, but was lured by an FBI-hired informant to carry out a bomb plot against a Federal Reserve building in New York.
According to the criminal complaint filed against Nafis, it was a “confidential informant” working for the US government that offered him the al-Qaeda links and the money required to execute the bombing scheme.
"It seems almost like an elaborate piece of theater," said Ramzi Kassem, a CUNY law professor who runs a clinic on counter-terrorism police tactics.
Kassem has criticized the FBI's growing reliance on confidential informants. He insists the tactic risks portrating that terror suspects are more of a threat than they really are.
"Would that person have taken that step but for the government informant's involvement?" Kassem asked.
In 2005, according to the US-based NBC News, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General issued “a report that found FBI agents failed to follow their own guidelines in 87 percent of all investigations involving confidential informants.”
According to the report, another case in recent years against four Newburgh men that reportedly attempted to blow up synagogues in the Bronx has also drawn similar criticism from those who say confidential informants have too much freedom in luring suspects into committing acts they would have never imagined otherwise.
In that case, a confidential informant offered to provide the suspects with “a set of missiles to launch at the Jewish houses of worship.”
After handing down minimum jail terms to three of the men, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Colleen McMahon slammed government investigators for their tactics.
"Only the government could have made a 'terrorist' out of [the defendant] whose buffoonery is positively Shakesperian in scope," said McMahon.
New York City law enforcement officials, however, insist that the use of confidential informants is perfectly legal.
Even the critics, according to the report, acknowledge the use of confidential informants does not, by itself, amount to police entrapment. Rather, they focus on the extraordinary measures taken by some informants, such as suggesting the terrorist targets and the timing of attacks, which raise questions.
"What sets these cases apart is the unusual degree to which the government agent is active," said Kassem.
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