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FBI Targeted Mentally Disabled Muslim American Citizens

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It’s about time the FBI is disbanded or significantly reduced in size.

FBI Targeted Mentally Disabled Muslim American Citizens

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A Human Rights Watch report, documenting abuses in US terrorism investigations, has illuminated some incredibly dubious practices carried out by law enforcement.

The report looks at investigations that began shortly after 9/11 and have carried on until the present day.

One disturbing practice, which seems to pop up over and over in the report, is the targeting of those with mental disabilities to ‘create’ crimes. This occurs during ‘sting’ operations, when agents pose as members of the Muslim American community, infiltrating mosques.

In an average sting operation, an undercover agent finds a suspect who they think is, say, selling illegal arms. They approach them and gather information, waiting for a crime to unfold.

However, when it comes to counter-terrorism operations, law enforcement officers have been accused of breaching this time-honored system, using a subject’s mental disability to actually foster terrorism. You read that right, by the way — counter-terrorism efforts are being used to foster terrorism.

In one instance a man named Rezwan Ferdaus was targeted by an FBI agent who infiltrated his local mosque. Although the FBI concluded he had mental disabilities, the FBI agent worked to gain the trust of Ferdaus. As they grew closer, the FBI agent convinced him to participate in a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol.

Ferdaus was supplied with fake weapons but as the plan unfolded, he grew visibly distressed. As Ferdaus deteriorated, he lost control of his bladder in such a severe way he was forced to wear diapers during the day. He also began to suffer from seizures and extreme weight loss. Eventually his health suffered so terribly, his father had to quit his job to care for him.

Ferdaus was later convicted of supplying material support to terrorism and is now serving a 17 year sentence in prison.

Another case of exploiting the mentally disabled involved Shawahar Matin Siraj. Described by the FBI as being ‘extremely impressionable due to severe intellectual limitations,’ he liked to spend his time playing video games and Pokémon in his mother’s house.

An undercover FBI agent who claimed to have a terminal illness (which mirrored the illness of Siraj’s late father) cozied up to him, and wove an emotional web around the vulnerable man. After the agent broached the idea of a terrorist attack to him, which involved blowing up a local subway station, Siraj is on record as saying he ‘had to ask his mother first.’ Even by the FBI’s own reports, Siraj never actually agreed to participate.

Still, he was convicted on four counts of conspiring to attack a subway station. On his first day in prison, Siraj apparently asked the guard for access to play Pokémon.

The report also details cases of harsh detainment that fly in the face of due process.

Uzair Paracha, who was arrested in the United States, spent two years in solitary confinement before his trial, only allowed to speak to guards. What this means is, in our system of ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ he was given some of the harshest legal punishment available before he was even convicted of a crime.

Although many have been quick to blame the Muslim American community for allowing extremism to foster, the reality is, they have been responsible for stopping 40% of all Islamic terrorist plots, conceived on US soil, in the last 10 years. A study by MPAC also showed Muslims made up a minority of all terrorist plots hatched in the United States, most being attributed to right wing extremism.

However, despite these pesky facts, it seems the Muslim American community can’t catch a break. Human Rights Watch noted that appropriate sentencing, the right to a fair trial, freedom from coercion and fairly conducted investigations have all been thrown by the wayside in the past 13 years.

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    • It’s not new that law enforcement goes out and gets a mentally handicapped person to “confess” to a violent crime. In high profile, violent crimes, like the killing of a tourist in Florida, the police are under pressure to get some, anyone, and hold them up to the public as “the killer.”

      The mentally handicapped persons believes that by confessing he is “helping the police,” and he wants to “help the police.”

    • John Smith

      You seem to be comparing the practices of the past and the practices of the present, trying to present a correlation between the two and then justify the illegal and immoral actions carried out by the law enforcement. How ridiculous.

      And no, this will not be the way for a “long, long” time. The outcry is growing and several cases are already in the courts.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Sort of like the UDBA did in Yugoslavia. And the NKVD/KGB in old Soviet Russia. They too had quotas to meet and did not care about how they met them. They could arrest you on the street or in the dead of night just like that (they had this joke in Stalin’s Russia: A man is lying in his bed, when suddenly there is a knock on the door. It’s 3 a.m. Full of apprehension he opens the door but it’s not the NKVD, it’s the neighbor. “What’s the matter?” – “The house is on fire!” – “Oh, thank God!”) But they too preferred to provoke discontent people into saying or doing something that could be construed as “counterrevolutionary” and then do you in. 25 years in the gulag or a bullet to the back of your neck. The purpose was and is the same: to instill fear in the populace and keep them in line. I see a similar thing happening now. For now they have singled out one group of people. They could do in others next. It’s a characteristic of totalitarianism. As Pastor Martin Niemöller put it: “When they came for the Social Democrats I kept silent, for I wasn’t a Social Democrat […] when they came for me there was no one around to speak out for me.” It’s so sad to see that part of the American leadership have become quite like Stalin and his henchmen: mentally sick, driven by paranoia, fear, cynicism and cold-hearted inhumanity.

    • Iman

      These Moslem cases are directly opposite the ones we always hear about criminals who pretend to be mentally ill inorder to reduce their sentences. The dark forces really hate Moslems.

    • Anonymous

      As long as they get some of the almighty dollar at they won’t care who they throw in jail

    • Heinz Catsup

      Reading this made me sad. How can anyone think doing this is a good idea?

    • Awesome

      It is indeed disgusting and absolutely abhorrent. However in a country where murderers can be acquitted only because of identity politics, it unfortunately isn’t that unusual.

    • Yausari

      innocent sick people.

    • mindy1

      They are seriously putting sick people in jail?? How is that even legal?

    • Awesome

      The government’s employees probably have a quota to meet in terms of “counter-terrorism operations”. Since their quota is based on a faulty premise, then, in order to keep the money coming in, they utilize entrapment techniques against vulnerable Muslims to maintain the numbers. Since Muslims are routinely denied their civil rights in kangaroo courts, these government employees are able to successfully get away with it. Thankfully, more people are reporting about it so hopefully it gets harder for them to get away with it in the future.

    • John Smith

      The guy wasn’t in control of his bladder, he was having seizures, he had severe weight loss… and then they imprison him for 17 years? Disgusting, absolutely abhorrent.

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