“The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism “sting operations” based on religious and ethnic identity, Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released today. Many of the more than 500 terrorism-related cases prosecuted in US federal courts since September 11, 2001, have alienated the very communities that can help prevent terrorist crimes…………..“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report. “But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”………………”
This has been suspected for some years: we have all posted on it, from the hapless young Afghanis and Jordanians to the highly improbable ‘Iranian-Texan plot’ with the Mexican Drug Cartels to assassinate the unimportant yes-man who is the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
This report is, however, more damning because of the staggering details and sources it provides. Many of these eager agents are probably like many other bureaucrats, seeking a track record of success against terrorism and possibly promotion. Not just federal agents, but federal prosecutors, especially in the Northeast area of the U.S. I suspected, flippantly, in one of my older posts that some of them like to hang around shwarma and falafel joints just for the food. Even the New York Police got into the act and started hounding Muslims and Arabs , not only within their jurisdictions, but in other parts of the state and possibly in other parts of the Eastern Seaboard. As if the streets of New York are quite safe enough at night.
Some, many of them could not tell a terrorist from the proverbial hole in the ground, that is why they were tempted to create their own “terrorists”. Sort of like the monster of Frenkenstein.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum