FBI, Cops Won't Comment on King's Muslim Assertions
Newsday, 4/21/09
http://tinyurl.com/dabhax
The FBI and Nassau police Monday declined to comment directly about Rep. Peter King's assertion that U.S. Muslims are uncooperative with police, but stressed that they do not focus investigations on particular religious denominations.
However, a spokeswoman for the federal Department of Homeland Security, Amy Kudwa, rejected King's assertion, saying it "would be unfair and inaccurate to characterize each Muslim community in the United States in a single statement."
On Monday, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the FBI to "confirm or deny" King's claim that Long Island mosques were under law enforcement surveillance. The FBI, while not addressing King's comments, said its investigations target individuals, not organizations. "The FBI does not investigate mosques or other houses of worship," spokesman James Margolin said in a statement Monday. "With proper predication, consistent with FBI and Department of Justice investigative guidelines and Constitutional protections, the FBI investigates individuals to determine whether they are engaged in or plotting criminal or terrorist acts."
Somali Muslims Call FBI Outreach 'Coercion'
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4/21/09
http://tinyurl.com/deh6te
ST. LOUIS — Concerns about racial profiling and other questionable tactics used to investigate the possible terrorist recruitment of Somalis living in the United States are prompting some Muslim leaders in St. Louis and elsewhere to limit their cooperation with the FBI
"The Somali Muslim community in particular feels they are under siege by law enforcement," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group.
Hooper cited recent instances of Muslims in Minnesota being interrogated by agents on college campuses, worshippers in Michigan being asked to spy in their mosques and the FBI's use of a paid informer to infiltrate mosques in California.
Elsewhere, he said, imams have had their immigration status threatened if they failed to cooperate with investigators.
In St. Louis, a CAIR official said he was contacted in September by a Somali business owner in Missouri who said he had been threatened by FBI agents.
"It was a carrot and stick where they were promising him rewards for spying on people in the community," said Jim Hacking III, a legal consultant for CAIR in St. Louis. "When he rebuffed those requests, they turned around and used the stick and threatened to keep him from seeing his children and 'burying' him."
On the night before President Barack Obama took office, Hacking said he was contacted by FBI agents who told him they needed to immediately find three Somalis who lived in the St. Louis area.
"One of the agents mentioned the inauguration and said it was very important that they verify the physical location of these people," Hacking said. "As we always would on a matter of national security, we helped them and put them in contact with the people they were looking for."
"Our preference would be to have very positive relations with law enforcement agencies at all levels of the government," Hooper said. "We hope to return to that in the near future. But it's a two-way street. We need to feel there is some trust, some mutual respect and these kind of inappropriate activities are not going to continue."...
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