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The Intercept: FBI Uses “Honeypot” To Ensnare Michigan Man

By on April 29, 2016 in Loon-at-large

khalil-abu-rayyan-twitter

(h/t:JD)

via. The Intercept

KHALIL ABU RAYYAN was a lonely young man in Detroit, eager to find a wife. Jannah Bride claimed she was a 19-year-old Sunni Muslim whose husband was killed in an airstrike in Syria. The two struck up a romantic connection through online communications.

Now, Rayyan, a 21-year-old Michigan man, is accused by federal prosecutors of supporting the Islamic State.

Documents released Tuesday show, however, that Rayyan was motivated not by religious radicalism but by the desire to impress Bride, who said she wanted to be a martyr.

Jannah Bride, not a real name, was in fact an FBI informant hired to communicate with Rayyan, who first came to the FBI’s attention when he retweeted a video from the Islamic State of people being thrown from buildings. He wrote later on Twitter: “Thanks, brother, that made my day.”

Rayyan, who had previously been arrested for having marijuana, is now charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and making a false statement to acquire a firearm.

Although Rayyan is not charged with terrorism, the FBI and federal prosecutors have treated his case as a national security concern, making numerous references in court filings and at a detention hearing to statements Rayyan made about the Islamic State and his supposed aspirations for violence.

Rayyan has pleaded not guilty to the federal gun charges, and his lawyers have asked the court to force the government to turn over all remaining communications between Rayyan and the FBI informant.

According to transcripts of conversations between Rayyan and the informant — which were made public for the first time this week — Rayyan had fallen in love with Bride and had even proposed marriage.

The transcripts show that the FBI informant initiated conversations about violence on several occasions, and when she did, Rayyan would tell her that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. In an online conversation on December 26, 2015, the informant asked Rayyan, using the Arabic word meaning this earthly life, “What do you want from this Dunya?”

“Honestly to get married,” he responded. “I think if I get married I will be happy. I’m just lonely sometimes. I want to start a family.”

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    • Awesome

      Why was Rayyan even considering becoming involved with what he believed was a women involved in terrorism and extremist thinking?

      Infatuation with a member of the opposite sex that sometimes pressures people into doing things that they otherwise would never do?

      Why didn’t he remember that Islam is a religion of peace, ditch the ‘women’ and her un-Islamic mentality and inform the authorities?

      Because he was a 19-year old, fresh-out-of-high school layman whose focus was on trying to impress a girl, rather than on what was right or wrong? Does anyone expect anything else from most teenagers when so many of them are ambivalent of the rules? Or do you think that day prison they call “grade school” is just for prepping kids for their menial roles in the real world that the majority of them are going to end up with?

    • Reynardine

      Not enough room in the little head for a brain, you know.

    • The greenmantle

      nothing so stupid as a man with an erection

      Sir David

    • Friend of Bosnia

      And they say they have the higher moral ground, and that women are respected in the Wedst.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Like the NKVD of Stalin’s Soviet Union of old. They too had quotas of people arrested, convicted of trumped-up charges and sent to the gulags or to the grave, to fulfill. Admittedly their quotas were much higher, but the general idea is the same. Because the world is turning back to authoritarianism, repression, tyranny, the abolishment or curtailing of public freedoms, in short, a big step backwards.

    • Joey Sanders

      Think about what has happened in many small towns mainly comprised of white people over the years. As many of their jobs declined due to companies sending their jobs overseas, people sought ways to make money.

      In the last 15 years, a lot of these small towns around the United States have become inundated with meth and crack. Most of the drug dealers are not these thuggish black people that they portray on TV. They are mainly white guys with southern accents.

      it is really saddening what is going on in that area. One of my motels is located in a small town off of I-95. It is amazing what I have to go through. I have to guard that property against drug dealers, meth heads, crackheads, and prostitutes.

      One time, a husband and wife came to my motel. The man said that his wife would be willing to do certain things if I gave them a room. I told them, nicely, to hit the road. I could tell you many more stories of how many times I have been solicited for sex. These are not poor black people. They are white southerners. Don’t tell that to Fox News.

    • Laurent Weppe

      It is like the Drug War. Though there are studies that show that whites do drugs at a similar clip to black people

      Not only that, but Whites are more likely to sell drug than Blacks: relevant quote:

      analysis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.6 percent of white adolescents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, compared to just 5.0 percent of blacks (a 32 percent difference).

      That means that for every black dealer, there is seven non-hispanic whites dealers, yet nearly 60% of the inmates sent to prison for drug offense are Blacks. It’s almost as if the system was deliberately rigged to spare white criminals

    • Reynardine

      If it passes the “but-for” test: But for the inducement, he would never have committed this type of crime. Certainly, his attorney will plead that.

    • mindy1

      I wonder if this would count as entrapment

    • Reynardine

      Darwin

    • Jekyll

      Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, lovely, lovely…well he won’t be either in prison

    • Laurent Weppe

      Not only that, but it reeks of incompetence: undercover informants are supposed to find criminals and terrorists: here, they are fabricating them, in order to show off flattering statistics “We arrested X number of people: clearly we’re skilled and competent and deserve our salaries and perks“.

      This attitude reminds me of that old skit by the Inconnus:

      For those who don’t understand French, the skit is about a (fictional) club of woefully incompetent hunters who waste their day off looking for a specific bird to hunt only to decide in the end to release a bunch of domesticated fowls in an open field so they can slaughter the birds and not come home empty-ended.

    • Reynardine

      Though you could dismiss this case as Darwin, various letter agencies have long honeytrapped victims… there was a case when I was young where a male informant seduced a female target and got her to procure drugs for him, whereupon he turned her in. She was acquitted on grounds of entrapment, but not before going through a complete trial process, and, over the years, I have heard of many others not so lucky. It is a legally and morally repugnant way for an agency to make its case or an agent to make his or her bones.

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