Terror Case Stirs Debate On Informants at Mosques: Essential Or Intrusive?

Excerpt:

On the surface, it seemed like a seamless maneuver, a textbook exercise in counterterrorism that nabbed four Newburghß, N.Y. men suspected of plotting to blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and shoot down military planes.

But the elaborate two-year sting operation that resulted in the May 20 arrests has exposed cracks in the layered and sometimes complicated relationship between mosques and law enforcement.

Muslims and Jews, law enforcement officials and lobbyists — everyone you ask is thrilled that the Riverdale plot was thwarted. The division, and it is a stark one, comes when the questions turn to FBI informants.

"It makes it more challenging," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "It's testing the confidence in the system."

Men such as Shahed Hussain, the FBI informant alleged to have brought together and helped finance the Newburgh foursome, straddle a blurry moral terrain, Al-Marayati said. Do informants report terrorist plots, or do they help manufacture them?

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