Of Mosques and G-men……………..
“Since the terror attacks of 2001, the F.B.I. and Muslim and Arab-American leaders across the country have worked to build a relationship of trust, sharing information both to fight terrorism and to protect the interests of mosques and communities. But those relations have reached a low point in recent months, many Muslim leaders say. Several high-profile cases in which informers have infiltrated mosques and helped promote plots, they say, have sown a corrosive fear among their people that F.B.I. informers are everywhere, listening………… Even in better times, the relationship has been a challenge to maintain, given that counterterrorism agents operate on multiple levels — holding open meetings at a mosque, say, and seeding it with informers…….. After four members of a mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., were charged in May with plotting to bomb two Bronx synagogues, the authorities acknowledged that the investigation had begun with an informer who became a linchpin in the scheme. Congregation members said he had frequented the mosque, offering young men money and gifts.The Queens imam arrested in September as investigators pursued the coffee vendor was an informer who had helped authorities. Last month, federal prosecutors moved to seize several buildings across the country that house mosques, saying they were owned by a nonprofit group with links to Iran. As a rare federal investigation that has ensnared houses of worship, the case stoked apprehensions that the government sees Arab-Americans and Muslims as a people apart…….. “
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