NYPD Designates Mosques as Terrorism Organizations

Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that
anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an
investigation and fair game for surveillance.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at least a dozen
“terrorism enterprise investigations” into mosques, according to
interviews and confidential police documents. The TEI, as it is known,
is a police tool intended to help investigate terrorist cells and the
like.

Many TEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to continue even
though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic
organization with operating as a terrorism enterprise.

The documents show in detail how, in its hunt for terrorists, the
NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put
information about them in secret police files. As a tactic, opening an
enterprise investigation on a mosque is so potentially invasive that
while the NYPD conducted at least a dozen, the FBI never did one,
according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials.

The strategy has allowed the NYPD to send undercover officers into
mosques and attempt to plant informants on the boards of mosques and at
least one prominent Arab-American group in Brooklyn, whose executive
director has worked with city officials, including Bill de Blasio, a
front-runner for mayor.

The revelations about the NYPD’s massive spying operations are in
documents recently obtained by The Associated Press and part of a new
book, “Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin
Laden’s Final Plot Against America.” The book by AP reporters Matt
Apuzzo and Adam Goldman is based on hundreds of previously unpublished
police files and interviews with current and former NYPD, CIA and FBI
officials.

The disclosures come as the NYPD is fighting off lawsuits accusing it
of engaging in racial profiling while combating crime. Earlier this
month, a judge ruled that the department’s use of the stop-and-frisk
tactic was unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union and two other groups have sued,
saying the Muslim spying programs are unconstitutional and make Muslims
afraid to practice their faith without police scrutiny.

Both Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly have
denied those accusations. They say police do not unfairly target people;
they only follow leads.

“As a matter of department policy, undercover officers and
confidential informants do not enter a mosque unless they are following
up on a lead,” Kelly wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal. “We have
a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another
terrorist attack — and we uphold the law in doing so.”

An NPYD spokesman declined to comment.

___

The NYPD did not limit its operations to collecting information on
those who attended the mosques or led prayers. The department sought
also to put people on the boards of New York’s Islamic institutions to
fill intelligence gaps.

One confidential NYPD document shows police wanted to put informants
in leadership positions at mosques and other organizations, including
the Arab American Association of New York in Brooklyn, a secular
social-service organization.

Linda Sarsour, the executive director, said her group helps new
immigrants adjust to life in the U.S. It was not clear whether the
department was successful in its plans.

The document, which appears to have been created around 2009, was
prepared for Kelly and distributed to the NYPD’s debriefing unit, which
helped identify possible informants.

Around that time, Kelly was handing out medals to the Arab American
Association’s soccer team, Brooklyn United, smiling and congratulating
its players for winning the NYPD’s soccer league.

Sarsour, a Muslim who has met with Kelly many times, said she felt betrayed.

“It creates mistrust in our organizations,” said Sarsour, who was
born and raised in Brooklyn. “It makes one wonder and question who is
sitting on the boards of the institutions where we work and pray.”

___

Before the NYPD could target mosques as terrorist groups, it had to
persuade a federal judge to rewrite rules governing how police can
monitor speech protected by the First Amendment.

The rules stemmed from a 1971 lawsuit, dubbed the Handschu case after
lead plaintiff Barbara Handschu, over how the NYPD spied on protesters
and liberals during the Vietnam War era.

David Cohen, a former CIA executive who became NYPD’s deputy
commissioner for intelligence in 2002, said the old rules didn’t apply
to fighting against terrorism.

Cohen told the judge that mosques could be used “to shield the work
of terrorists from law enforcement scrutiny by taking advantage of
restrictions on the investigation of First Amendment activity.”

NYPD lawyers proposed a new tactic, the TEI, that allowed officers to
monitor political or religious speech whenever the “facts or
circumstances reasonably indicate” that groups of two or more people
were involved in plotting terrorism or other violent crime.

The judge rewrote the Handschu rules in 2003. In the first eight
months under the new rules, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division opened at
least 15 secret terrorism enterprise investigations, documents show. At
least 10 targeted mosques.

Doing so allowed police, in effect, to treat anyone who attends
prayer services as a potential suspect. Sermons, ordinarily protected by
the First Amendment, could be monitored and recorded.

Among the mosques targeted as early as 2003 was the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge.

“I have never felt free in the United States. The documents tell me I
am right,” Zein Rimawi, one of the Bay Ridge mosque’s leaders, said
after reviewing an NYPD document describing his mosque as a terrorist
enterprise.

Rimawi, 59, came to the U.S. decades ago from Israel’s West Bank.

“Ray Kelly, shame on him,” he said. “I am American.”

___

The NYPD believed the tactics were necessary to keep the city safe, a view that sometimes put it at odds with the FBI.

In August 2003, Cohen asked the FBI to install eavesdropping
equipment inside a mosque called Masjid al-Farooq, including its prayer
room.

Al-Farooq had a long history of radical ties. Omar Abdel Rahman, the
blind Egyptian sheik who was convicted of plotting to blow up New York
City landmarks, once preached briefly at Al-Farooq. Invited preachers
raged against Israel, the United States and the Bush administration’s
war on terror.

One of Cohen’s informants said an imam from another mosque had
delivered $30,000 to an al-Farooq leader, and the NYPD suspected the
money was for terrorism.

But Amy Jo Lyons, the FBI assistant special agent in charge for
counterterrorism, refused to bug the mosque. She said the federal law
wouldn’t permit it.

The NYPD made other arrangements. Cohen’s informants began to carry
recording devices into mosques under investigation. They hid microphones
in wristwatches and the electronic key fobs used to unlock car doors.

Even under a TEI, a prosecutor and a judge would have to approve
bugging a mosque. But the informant taping was legal because New York
law allows any party to record a conversation, even without consent from
the others. Like the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, the NYPD never
demonstrated in court that al-Farooq was a terrorist enterprise but that
didn’t stop the police from spying on the mosques for years.

And under the new Handschu guidelines, no one outside the NYPD could question the secret practice.

Martin Stolar, one of the lawyers in the Handschu case, said it’s
clear the NYPD used enterprise investigations to justify open-ended
surveillance. The NYPD should only tape conversations about building
bombs or plotting attacks, he said.

“Every Muslim is a potential terrorist? It is completely
unacceptable,” he said. “It really tarnishes all of us and tarnishes our
system of values.”

___

Al-Ansar Center, a windowless Sunni mosque, opened in Brooklyn
several years ago, attracting young Arabs and South Asians. NYPD
officers feared the mosque was a breeding ground for terrorists, so
informants kept tabs on it.

One NYPD report noted that members were fixing up the basement, turning it into a gym.

“They also want to start Jiujitsu classes,” it said.

The NYPD was particularly alarmed about Mohammad Elshinawy, 26, an
Islamic teacher at several New York mosques, including Al-Ansar.
Elshinawy was a Salafist — a follower of a puritanical Islamic movement —
whose father was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade
Center attacks, according to NYPD documents.

The FBI also investigated whether Elshinawy recruited people to wage
violent jihad overseas. But the two agencies investigated him very
differently.

The FBI closed the case after many months without any charges. Federal investigators never infiltrated Al-Ansar.

“Nobody had any information the mosque was engaged in terrorism
activities,” a former federal law enforcement official recalled,
speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to
discuss the investigation.

The NYPD wasn’t convinced. A 2008 surveillance document described
Elshinawy as “a young spiritual leader (who) lectures and gives speeches
at dozens of venues” and noted, “He has orchestrated camping trips and
paintball trips.”

The NYPD deemed him a threat in part because “he is so highly regarded by so many young and impressionable individuals.”

No part of Elshinawy’s life was out of bounds. His mosque was the
target of a TEI. The NYPD conducted surveillance at his wedding. An
informant recorded the wedding and police videotaped everyone who came
and went.

“We have nothing on the lucky bride at this time but hopefully will learn about her at the service,” one lieutenant wrote.

Four years later, the NYPD was still watching Elshinawy without
charging him. He is now a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit against the
NYPD.

“These new NYPD spying disclosures confirm the experiences and worst
fears of New York’s Muslims,” ACLU lawyer Hina Shamsi said. “From houses
of worship to a wedding, there’s no area of New York Muslim religious
or personal life that the NYPD has not invaded through its bias-based
surveillance policy.”