Informant says N.Y. police paid him to ‘bait’ Muslims
‘We need you to pretend to be one of them,’ man told
NEW YORK — A paid informant for the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit was under orders to “bait” fellow Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told the Associated Press.
Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Bengali descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called “create and capture.” He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.
“We need you to pretend to be one of them,” Rahman recalled the police telling him. “It’s street theatre.”
Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was “detrimental to the constitution.” After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been interviewed by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, “Steve,” and his handler’s NYPD phone number was disconnected.
Rahman’s account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighbourhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.
The Associated Press corroborated Rahman’s account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his po- lice handler. The AP also reviewed the photos Rahman sent to police.
Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD’s wideranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighbourhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques — known informally as “mosque crawlers” — tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there’s no evidence they committed a crime.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday. He has denied widespread NYPD spying, saying police only follow leads.