Report on Entrapment Describes Pattern of Informant-Created “Terrorism”

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We’ve been writing a bit about Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the young Oregon man charged on WMD charges for allegedly trying to detonate an inert bomb the FBI helped him get. His attorneys are preparing an aggressive entrapment defense (those defenses almost never work, but there are some interesting factors in his case), arguing that Mohamud refused early entreaties to engage in violence yet the FBI kept pressing him to do so.

NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice has just released a report mapping out the pattern of such cases. The report focuses on three NY-area cases–the Newburgh Four, the Fort Dix Five, and Shahawar Matin Siraj cases–to contextualize what is going on. It focuses on the role that informants play in these cases.

In the cases this Report examines, the government’s informants held themselves out as Muslims and looked in particular to incite other Muslims to commit acts of violence. The government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and, moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe it was their duty to take action against the United States. In two of the three cases, the government relied on the defendants’ vulnerabilities—poverty and youth, for example—in its inducement methods. In all three cases, the government selected or encouraged the proposed locations that the defendants would later be accused of targeting. In all three cases, the government also provided the defendants with, or encouraged the defendants to acquire, material evidence, such as weaponry or violent videos, which would later be used to convict them.

Most powerfully, the report explains how these cases have affected the mens’ families. For example, in the case of the Duka brothers, in which the informant testified on the stand that the Duka brothers had no knowledge of the alleged Fort Dix plot, their extended family has had their classic immigrant success story lives upended.

The same night that the FBI arrested his sons, Ferik Duka was arrested and held in immigration detention for a month.187

Amidst everything else, Dritan’s family was summarily evicted from the apartment they had rented. Zurata recalls,

“They [the landlord] said ‘get out of the apartment these are terrorists.’ They gave us three days’ time to get our clothes. We had to get clothes from the apartment and bring them to our house, which was surrounded by news people. I had the truck, but nobody to drive, nobody to help.”188

After the eviction, Dritan’s five children moved in with their grandparents and uncle Burim, where they’ve lived ever since. Without his brothers to run the roofing Burim dropped out of high school to support his remaining family members. Noting that his nieces and nephews are “like orphans now,” Burim said, “it’s me who supports them now… I basically support four families.”189 Shouldering a heavy burden for a 20-year old, Burim now runs one of the Dukas’ roofing companies; Ferik came out of retirement to run the other business.

At the time of the arrests, the Dukas’ roofing companies had over $400,000 in contracts. These dried up almost immediately after the brothers were arrested. People who had worked with Ferik for more than a decade took their business elsewhere. Their biggest customer, the local fire department, called to say they had been warned by the government not to do business with the Dukas. Internet sites labeled their businesses as being “run by terrorists,”190 and they received harassing phone calls at their businesses. While they once dreamt of building four neighboring houses, one for each brother, today they are barely able to make ends meet.

And perhaps the most stunning detail is this description of the incitement a cop, Osama Eldawoody, used to get Shahawar Matin Siraj to accept his invitation to violence: Abu Ghraib.

In April 2004, when the abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib216 first became public, Eldawoody seized on the opportunity to take things to the next level. Shahina explains that Eldawoody started showing Shahawar “awful, awful scary photos of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If you show these pictures even to a non-Muslim, it’ll make them crazy. No one can bear these photos, Eldawoody showed Shahawar these photos and said, ‘it’s your duty as a Muslim to do jihad in response.’”217

After months of Eldawoody’s campaign, Shahawar finally crumbled when he was shown pictures of young Iraqi girls being threatened and raped; he told Eldawoody that they had to do something.218 Eldawoody then told him about a group called “The Brotherhood,” with operatives in upstate New York who could help them.219 Then, in May 2004, Eldawoody told his handlers, “I believe it’s time to record.”220

Oh, okay. Use evidence of American crimes as a way to induce others to commit fake crimes. Only unlike all but a “few bad apples” convicted in those real crimes, the government will actually indict and convict in the fake crimes.

Do they not see how this is perverting the entire concept of justice?

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  1. dipper says:

    I am just appalled that our government is doing this. We don’t even need to wait for foreigners to take us down….we’re doing a fine job ourselves.

  2. bobschacht says:

    Do they not see how this is perverting the entire concept of justice?

    Um, last I checked, this administration is not real good at noticing perversions of the concept of justice. It’s almost like they have a “Perversions Desk” somewhere at DOJ.

    Bob in AZ

  3. harpie says:

    Thanks for bringing this report to our attention.

    It would be very gratifying to be able to entrap the entrappers.

    • harpie says:

      End notes. I’m trying to read the report, and the notes are quite extensive/informative.

    • Kelly Canfield says:

      Footnote ref#s in the PDF link. For instance 187 refs to:

      187 According to Ferik Duka, the Duka family filed papers to adjust their immigration status multiple times, indicating
      that the government was aware that they were in the country without proper documentation long before Ferik’s
      arrest and detention. Ferik asserts that he has paid taxes since 1985 and that he owns two companies and the
      family’s home. Ferik was detained for one month before seeing an immigration judge, who ordered his release.
      CHRGJ Interview with Ferik Duka, supra note 162.

  6. harpie says:

    A4. Permissive Legal Frameworks [emphasis added]

    [p8] At the same time, the DOJ has expanded its powers and relaxed longstanding safeguards against rights abuses, including, but not limited to, the relaxation of the Attorney General’s regulations of the FBI. 48 Moreover, the DOJ’s guidance on racial profiling49 bans profiling on the basis of race and ethnicity, but does not explicitly ban profiling on the basis of religion or national origin, and creates loopholes for racial profiling in national security and border security contexts. […]

  7. jo6pac says:

    I’m not sure what the problem is with entrapment? It’s so much easier and gives great pr. I’m sure the fbi is under the same corp pressure to get results we can us NOW. It’s all gone to hell and then we have NO Rights in the New Amerika.

    Thanks EW

  8. Jim White says:

    Uh oh:

    (Reuters) – An Afghan prisoner has died at the Guantanamo detention center in an apparent suicide, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

    The prisoner was identified as Inayatullah, a 37-year-old Afghan who was accused of being a member of al Qaeda, the U.S. military’s Southern Command said in a statement.

    • harpie says:

      Inayatullah Nassim

      Myopic Pentagon keeps filling Guantánamo; Andy Worthington; 9/20/07
      http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/09/20/myopic-pentagon-keeps-filling-guantanamo/

      Inayatullah
      And finally –- for now, at least –- last Wednesday another new boy, an Afghan identified only as Inayatullah, flew into Guantánamo from Afghanistan. Captured, according to the DoD’s press release, “as a result of ongoing DoD operations in the struggle against violent extremists in Afghanistan,” the DoD claimed that Inayatullah had “admitted that he was the al-Qaeda Emir of Zahedan, Iran, and planned and directed al-Qaeda terrorist operations,” adding that he “collaborated with numerous al-Qaeda senior leaders, to include Abu Ubaydah al-Masri and Azzam, executing their instructions and personally supporting global terrorist efforts.” […]

      Who Are the Remaining Prisoners in Guantánamo? Part Eight: Captured in Afghanistan (2002-07) ; Andy Worthington; 11/17/10

      ISN 10028 Inayatullah (Afghanistan)
      Also described as “a dangerous terror suspect,” Inayatullah arrived at Guantánamo in September 2007.
      […]
      In October 2010, Cageprisoners explained [link] that Inayatullah’s full name is Inayatullah Nassim, that he is married with six children, and that before his capture he ran a telephone shop in Zahedan. Cageprisoners also reported that he was concerned about the whereabouts of his brother Hidayatullah, who was apparently seized in Quetta, Pakistan some years ago, and transferred to Bagram.

      • thatvisionthing says:

        the DoD claimed that Inayatullah had “admitted that he was the al-Qaeda Emir of Zahedan, Iran, and planned and directed al-Qaeda terrorist operations,” adding that he “collaborated with numerous al-Qaeda senior leaders, to include Abu Ubaydah al-Masri and Azzam, executing their instructions and personally supporting global terrorist efforts.” […]

        I’d sure love to have a video and transcript of that conversation. In his own words.

      • mzchief says:

        It’s appears to me a Rube Goldberg machine. I wonder what is the ka-ching (the rents taking in monetary and political “currencies” or payoffs) for each entity involved each time a new person is taken from Afghanistan and placed in Gitmo?

    • Jeff Kaye says:

      Definitely, Gladio and its offshoots are the key links in the chain that ties together state sponsorship of right-wing terrorism by the West.

      My thanks to Marcy for pointing us to this excellent new report by NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, showing how the same techniques utilized on a global scale (lying, subterfuge, getting others to engage in violence for the state’s own purposes) are being enacted domestically.

      Of course, anyone who has read Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent knows that this kind of activity goes way back, and was a favorite of Czarist police, for instance.

      Do they not see how this is perverting the entire concept of justice?

      No… those perverting justice are in no position to perceive what they are doing. They laugh at do-gooders like you and me.

      • thatvisionthing says:

        state sponsorship of right-wing terrorism

        Hi Jeff… thinking… there was a story by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in December about Terry Norman, a student and an FBI/police informant at Kent State in 1970. He was carrying a .38 pistol that day and a new audio analysis last year of a student recording revealed four .38 gunshots about a minute before the National Guard shot and killed the four students. The story had the interesting detail that the FBI had paid Norman to infiltrate “a meeting of Nazi and white power sympathizers in Virginia a month before the Kent State shootings” before they used him as a campus informer. It just seemed jarring to me — Nazi sympathizers?

        Terry Norman’s FBI connection

        Whether due to miscommunication, embarrassment or an attempted coverup, the FBI initially denied any involvement with Norman as an informant.

        “Mr. Norman was not working for the FBI on May 4, 1970, nor has he ever been in any way connected with this Bureau,” director J. Edgar Hoover declared to Ohio Congressman John Ashbrook in an August 1970 letter.

        Three years later, Hoover’s successor, Clarence Kelley, was forced to correct the record. The director acknowledged that the FBI had paid Norman $125 for expenses incurred when, at the bureau’s encouragement, Norman infiltrated a meeting of Nazi and white power sympathizers in Virginia a month before the Kent State shootings.

        If you read the stories, you’ll see that the FBI and campus police covered up for Norman, and I have read many anecdotes about how the FBI turned away information from Kent witnesses. Later I read the same kind of stories about investigating the Oklahoma City bombing — local investigations were thwarted by the FBI. This diary is like more of the same.

        One of the details I just read this year (CNN 5/4/00) that kind of shocked me was, you know that famous photo of Kent State, the girl crying out over the body of the dead boy? The photographer who took that photo drove over two hours to Pennsylvania to get his film developed. He was afraid there was a whitewash going on in Ohio and that his pictures would disappear. Which jives with comments I read on Daily Kos in past years of the FBI confiscating film turned in to local developers — see thread here — and the people who turned the film in never got it back.

        Has it always been like this? Will it always be like this? Faked, provoked, entrapped, obstructed — the real perpetrators shielded? I don’t see any way to stop them — or any way to believe them. Is there NO oversight or accountability at the top?

  10. thatvisionthing says:

    Re this:

    In April 2004, when the abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib216 first became public, Eldawoody seized on the opportunity to take things to the next level. Shahina explains that Eldawoody started showing Shahawar “awful, awful scary photos of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If you show these pictures even to a non-Muslim, it’ll make them crazy. No one can bear these photos, Eldawoody showed Shahawar these photos and said, ‘it’s your duty as a Muslim to do jihad in response.’”217

    After months of Eldawoody’s campaign, Shahawar finally crumbled when he was shown pictures of young Iraqi girls being threatened and raped; he told Eldawoody that they had to do something.218 Eldawoody then told him about a group called “The Brotherhood,” with operatives in upstate New York who could help them.219 Then, in May 2004, Eldawoody told his handlers, “I believe it’s time to record.”220

    Seems worth posting again: From Antiwar Radio last summer, Scott Horton Interviews Bruce Fein (Antiwar Scott Horton, not The Other Scott Horton at Harper’s):

    BRUCE FEIN: It’s very striking, Scott, that if you examine the reported colloquy that was had in a New York Federal District Court up in the Southern District of New York recently between Faisal Shahzad–he was the individual who pled guilty to having the car with a bomb in New York Times Square–and the attempted conspiracy, if you will, to kill Americans–and he was asked by the judge when he pled guilty, “Well, why did you do this?” He said, “Well, we are at war with Islam; that’s what the Afghanistan and Pakistan wars are about.” And she said, “Well, but why are you killing women and children if it’s a war?” And he says, “Well, your drones don’t make any distinction when they come crashing into Afghanistan and Pakistan between women and children–they kill anybody. So why are we to play by Queensberry rules where you engage in atrocities?” And she didn’t have an answer for that.

    And this was an individual–Faisal–who was a U.S. citizen. He didn’t say, “I hate American liberty.” He didn’t say that he despised the fact that women didn’t have headscarves on or burqas that caused him to do what he did. It was retaliation for exactly what we’re doing abroad…

    SCOTT HORTON: In fact I just interviewed a writer, a journalist named Stephan Salisbury, about some of these entrapment cases, these bogus terrorism cases since September 11th. And he talks about how the informants always use Israeli policy, American policy in the Middle East as their talking points to try to provoke these people into saying something stupid into an open microphone so that they can be prosecuted. And they don’t ever say, “Don’t you hate it that women can wear skirts to a primary election?” Or something like that. They always say, “Look at what’s going on in the West Bank! How can you not fight back?” That’s what the provocateur says to entrap.

    Like, if you were going to get to the cause of all of this terrorism, when is somebody going to look up at, say, Donald Rumsfeld and those guys up there? Who tasks Eldawoody and determines investigations? Who checks and balances the taskers? Does Congress ever have any control over any of this?

    Because what I see described here is a US-self-perpetuating terrorism loop, screened off from any oversight or wisdom, and we will always be at war with East Asia. The more crap we do, the more “terrorists” we need to create to scapegoat and the more “patriotic” we have to be? Uh… patriocide?

    And — I’m just wondering, these photos the targets are shown to incite — do they get to see photos we DON’T? That would be an interesting twist on Obama’s national security reasons for keeping photos secret. I wonder if this can be discovered.

  11. marcusreno says:

    This is very familar to me. In the mid 1980’s, the FBI then the DEA began to turn junkies into Class I violators through professional informants. An informant would go to a junkie and ask him-can you get me 500 kilos of cocaine for 45,000 per kilo? (always a price well above the going wholesale rate) to which the junkie would always say sure. The next step would be to tape record the conversation and then get a wiretap (no sample even reqired). A wiretap on the junkie would go up and listen to him and his buddies talk about dope with no hope of anyone ever giving them 1 kilo much less 500. Then when they cannot produce it, they get busted for conspiracy to distribute 500 kilos of cocaine. (My favorite story was when the FBI had to give their informant money to give to the target as the kingpin’s phone had been shutoff for nonpayment.) At a conference in 2004, the DOJ head of Narcotics gave a speech and stated that she did not understand why over 75% of narcotics wiretaps were dryholes and of the remaining cases over 75% of the charges were talking about dope on the phone and not real dope counts. The FBI is now doing the samae thing in terrorism.

    • thatvisionthing says:

      (My favorite story was when the FBI had to give their informant money to give to the target as the kingpin’s phone had been shutoff for nonpayment.)

      Sounds like a scene from The Wire’s second season — the cash-strapped union chief doesn’t pay his phone bill for 3 months and then finds out his account is flagged to not be shut off — the police are wiretapping him.