New York: The New York Police Department targeted Muslim mosques with tactics normally reserved for criminal organisations, according to newly obtained police documents that showed police collecting the license plates of worshippers, monitoring them on surveillance cameras and cataloging sermons through a network of informants.
The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, have come to light as the NYPD fends off criticism of its monitoring of Muslim student groups and its cataloging of mosques and Muslim businesses in nearby Newark, New Jersey.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday the secret operation monitoring Muslims was "legal," "appropriate" and "constitutional." He declined to discuss details of the monitoring programs but said they were necessary to protect a city with a history of homegrown terror plots, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre.
"We're not going to make the mistakes we made after the 1993 bombing," Bloomberg said. "We cannot let our guard down again. We cannot slack in our vigilance. The threat was real. The threat is real. The threat is not going away."
The NYPD's spokesman, Paul Browne, told reporters on Thursday that its officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.
The new documents, prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, show how the NYPD's roster of paid informants monitored conversations and sermons inside mosques. The records offer the first glimpse of what those informants, known informally as "mosque crawlers," gleaned from inside the houses of worship. For instance, when a Danish newspaper published inflammatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in September 2005, Muslim communities around the world erupted in outrage.
Violent mobs took to the streets in the Middle East. A Somali man even broke into the cartoonist's house in Denmark with an ax.
In New York, thousands of miles away, it was a different story. Muslim leaders preached peace and urged people to protest lawfully. Write letters to politicians, they said. Some advocated boycotting Danish products, burning flags and holding rallies.
Comments
0 comment