Tensions Between FBI and Muslims Over Entrapment Charges Growing

Two weeks after a Somali-born teen was charged with terrorism for plotting to detonate what turned out to be a fake bomb supplied, built and issued to the suspect by the FBI, American Muslims are talking about what they believe to be a religiously-driven effort by the bureau to ferret out terrorism in their communities -- even if that means using informants and creating plots and scenarios out of thin air.

Indeed, as Lynne Jackson, founder of the Albany-based Project SALAM (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims), told Change.org last week that it feels "as though the FBI is playing off the same playbook, the same script," with its recent string of terrorism-related arrests based on information provided by undercover informants. Jackson and others will be sponsoring a public forum, "The Violation of Human Rights: The 'War on Terror' Continues at Home and Abroad," at Judson Memorial Church in New York City, on Dec. 10.

Meanwhile, the FBI's tactics are provoking a backlash on the opposite side of the country among activists and others in the Muslim community who say the FBI's tactics are alienating those whose help it needs the most.

"The FBI wants to treat the Muslim community as a partner while investigating us behind our backs,'' said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student and member of the Islamic Center of Irvine, which is located in the country's largest Muslim population, in Southern California. "They can't have it both ways."

Kurdi told The Washington Post in a Sunday feature that his mosque had been the target of a FBI informant four years ago, the repercussions of which the tight community is still living with. The arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, at Thanksgiving on a charge of attempting to depoy a weapon of mass destruction at a tree lighting in downtown Portland, has apparently opened up new wounds, with Muslim-American communities and civil rights advocates wondering if Muslims aren't being unfairly probed -- and infiltrated -- by the federal government.

"The community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, which acts as an umbrella group for more than 75 mosques in the region.

Their feelings stem from the appearance of one Craig Monteilh, a.k.a Farouk al-Aziz, at the Irvine mosque in 2006. He had hardly been out of prison (for forgery) when local police asked him to infiltrate drug gangs and white supremacist groups in 2003. The FBI soon sought him out and asked if he would "infiltrate mosques," Monteilh told the Post. The FBI refused to comment on Monteilh, who has gone public -- saying he was forced to entrap innocent Muslims -- and is suing the bureau.

Monteleilh joined the Irvine mosque and soon started raising eyebrows with his talk about "jihad" and his increasingly traditional style of dress. "We started hearing that he was saying weird things," said Kurdi.

In May 2007, Monteilh told his handlers that he had recorded a conversation about jihad during a car ride with two members of the mosque. One of those members, Ahmadullah Sais Niazi,  was eventually arrested -- but not before he called Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), concerned that "Farouk" had been talking about weapons and bombs and blowing up a mall. Ayloush brought this information over to the FBI, essentially turning in the bureau's own informant.

Monteilh was "cut loose," and he soon told everyone about his undercover work, but it wasn't for some time that charges against Niazi were dropped. Monteeilh is suing the FBI because he says the bureau and the local police set him up on a grant-theft charge and a jail sentence out of retaliation.

The case is one of many in which American Muslims say that informants like Monteilh have been selected to pursue vulnerable individuals with their community in the domestic war on terror. Change.org reported on similar cases in New York and New Jersey, where there are active movements to investigate claims of entrapment.

"The FBI seek out troubled people – nobody is arguing that some of these individuals aren't deeply troubled – and then enable and facilitate their aspirations," Zahra Billo, an attorney for CAIR, told The Guardian on Tuesday. It is the FBI's job to stop operational terrorists. It is not the FBI's job to enable aspirational terrorists."

Photo Credit: Beth Rankin