The NYPD conducted secret operations profiling Muslims in the Tri-State area, and now it’s being revealed that they had help.
STORY: NY Post Bites Their Tongue After NYPD Muslim Surveillance Surfaces
A paid informant for the NYPD intelligence unit was under orders to “bait” Muslims into saying inflammatory things about America. The informant lived a double life, taking pictures inside mosques while collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam.
Uncovered by the Associated Press:
Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American 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 theater.”
Now Rahman is regretting his role in the case, telling the AP he believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was “detrimental to the Constitution.”
Rahman went on to say:
“I was an informant for the NYPD, for a little while, to investigate terrorism,” he wrote on Oct. 2. He said he no longer thought it was right. Perhaps he had been hunting terrorists, he said, “but I doubt it…I hated that I was using people to make money,” Rahman said. “I made a mistake.”
“I was trying to get money,” Rahman said. “I was playing the game.”
It was a dangerous game Rahman was playing; his actions could have caused innocent people to be jailed for nothing.
SOURCE: AP
This handout photo provided by Jamill Noorata, taken May 3, 2012, shows Shamiur Rahman, left, sitting with Siraj Wahhaj at John Jay Community College in New York. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Jamill Noorata)
