Mew Job for robby-mosque narc.

[Vindris the Stickleructor]

Calif. case highlights use of mosque spies
Muslim-American organizations demand inquiry after informant exposed
The Associated Press
SANTA ANA, California - The revelation that the FBI planted a spy in a
Southern California mosque was explosive news in a Muslim community that
has long suspected the government of even broader surveillance.
Muslim-American organizations have demanded an inquiry. Some say the
news has rattled their faith in American democracy.
Despite the reaction, former FBI agents and federal prosecutors say
spying on mosques is still one of the government's best weapons to
thwart terrorists and that the benefit to national security is likely to
far outweigh any embarrassment to the agency.
"What matters to the FBI is preventing a massive attack that might be
planned by some people ... using the mosque or church as a shield
because they believe they're safe there," said Robert Blitzer, the FBI's
former counterterrorism chief.
"That is what the American people want the FBI to do," he said. "They
don't want some type of attack happening on U.S. soil because the FBI
didn't act on information."
One of the most-heralded U.S. terrorism convictions, for example, grew
out of the work of an informant who spent months inside a New Jersey
mosque and derailed a plan to blow up New York City landmarks. Radical
Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman was sentenced to life in prison in
1995. He was also the spiritual leader for the men convicted in the 1993
bombing at the World Trade Center.
"A lot of what happened was planned in the mosque," said Andy McCarthy,
who was lead prosecutor on the case. "The recruiting went on in the
mosque, a lot of the instruction went on in the mosque, we even had gun
transactions in there."
California case comes to light
In the California case, information about the informant who spied on the
Islamic Center of Irvine came out last week at a detention hearing for a
brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, an Afghan native and
naturalized U.S. citizen named Ahmadullah Niazi.
Niazi, 34, was arrested Feb. 20 on charges of lying about his ties to
terrorist groups on his citizenship and passport applications. He will
be arraigned Monday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.
FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III testified at the hearing that an
FBI informant infiltrated Niazi's mosque and several others in Orange
County and befriended Niazi. Ropel said the informant recorded Niazi on
multiple occasions talking about blowing up buildings, acquiring weapons
and sending money to the Afghan mujahadeen.
Niazi has not been charged with terrorism and it's not yet clear if the
FBI was focused on anything beyond his activities. Neither the mosque
nor any other of its members have been charged.
A 46-year-old fitness instructor told The Associated Press last week he
was the informant. Craig Monteilh of Irvine said Niazi talked about
blowing up buildings and discussed sending Monteilh to a terrorist
training camp in Yemen or Pakistan.
Monteilh said his tenure as an informant ended after Niazi and other
members of the Islamic Center of Irvine reported him to authorities. A
Muslim advocacy group has demanded a federal investigation into whether
Niazi was arrested because he refused to become an FBI informant after
telling the agency about Monteilh.
Muslim leaders suspected infiltration
Local Muslim leaders say they had suspected since at least 2006 that the
FBI was trying to infiltrate the Islamic Center and other Muslim
organizations.
Some community leaders, worried that they were being watched, filed a
Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI in 2006 seeking
surveillance records on themselves. They are still engaged in litigation
over the request, said Shakeel Syed, executive of the Islamic Shura
Council of Southern California.
"We suspected this was happening," said Syed, who suspects his home and
office phones are wired. "What these guys have done is create an
environment where every person begins to suspect the other and with the
infighting and inward suspicion, the community becomes it's own victim."
A spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles bureau, Lourdes Arocho, had no
comment.
Former FBI agents, however, said that although the law places almost no
constraints on the use of informants, the agency takes sending an
informant into a mosque very seriously and imposes a higher threshold
for such requests.
Agents would have to have credible and specific information about
criminal activity inside a mosque or being committed by a mosque member
before sending a plant in, said Steven Pomerantz, former assistant
director and chief of counterterrorism for the FBI.
Such a request would also be approved by the highest-ranking agency
officials, former agents said.
"You just wouldn't go sending informants willy nilly into mosques just
to determine what was going on," Pomerantz said. "You have to have some
articulable reason or basis to do that."