[erelvenewmeva]

Los Angeles, January 30 – An FBI informer sent to infiltrate a California mosque was made the subject of a restraining order after scaring Muslim worshippers with demands for holy war.

Craig Monteilh was known to members of the Irvine Islamic Center as Farouk al-Aziz, an apparently devout and at times over-zealous Muslim.

But when he began speaking of jihad and plans to blow up buildings, senior figures at the mosque reported him to the FBI - the very people who sent him.

Now the FBI is facing criticism for its use of such stooges which have backfired in a number of cases. The law enforcement agency's problems have been confounded after Monteilh, a petty criminal with forgery convictions, went public with claims he received $177,000 tax free in 15 months for his work.

Shakeel Syed, of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California which represents more than 75 mosques told the Washington Post: The community feels betrayed.

Source: Here

Please be aware, not everybody could get as lucky as those guys, Allah SWT saved them just in time.

[erelvenewmeva]

Calif. case highlights FBI's use of mosque spies

SANTA ANA, California — The revelation that the FBI planted a spy in a Southern California mosque was explosive news in a Muslim community that has long suspected the government of even broader surveillance.

Muslim-American organizations have demanded an inquiry. Some say the news has rattled their faith in American democracy.

Despite the reaction, former FBI agents and federal prosecutors say spying on mosques is still one of the government's best weapons to thwart terrorists and that the benefit to national security is likely to far outweigh any embarrassment to the agency.

"What matters to the FBI is preventing a massive attack that might be planned by some people ... using the mosque or church as a shield because they believe they're safe there," said Robert Blitzer, the FBI's former counterterrorism chief.

"That is what the American people want the FBI to do," he said. "They don't want some type of attack happening on U.S. soil because the FBI didn't act on information."

One of the most-heralded U.S. terrorism convictions, for example, grew out of the work of an informant who spent months inside a New Jersey mosque and derailed a plan to blow up New York City landmarks. Radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman was sentenced to life in prison in 1995. He was also the spiritual leader for the men convicted in the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.

"A lot of what happened was planned in the mosque," said Andy McCarthy, who was lead prosecutor on the case. "The recruiting went on in the mosque, a lot of the instruction went on in the mosque, we even had gun transactions in there."

California case comes to light
In the California case, information about the informant who spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine came out last week at a detention hearing for a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, an Afghan native and naturalized U.S. citizen named Ahmadullah Niazi.

Niazi, 34, was arrested Feb. 20 on charges of lying about his ties to terrorist groups on his citizenship and passport applications. He will be arraigned Monday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.

FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III testified at the hearing that an FBI informant infiltrated Niazi's mosque and several others in Orange County and befriended Niazi. Ropel said the informant recorded Niazi on multiple occasions talking about blowing up buildings, acquiring weapons and sending money to the Afghan mujahadeen.

Niazi has not been charged with terrorism and it's not yet clear if the FBI was focused on anything beyond his activities. Neither the mosque nor any other of its members have been charged.

A 46-year-old fitness instructor told The Associated Press last week he was the informant. Craig Monteilh of Irvine said Niazi talked about blowing up buildings and discussed sending Monteilh to a terrorist training camp in Yemen or Pakistan.

Monteilh said his tenure as an informant ended after Niazi and other members of the Islamic Center of Irvine reported him to authorities. A Muslim advocacy group has demanded a federal investigation into whether Niazi was arrested because he refused to become an FBI informant after telling the agency about Monteilh.

Muslim leaders suspected infiltration
Local Muslim leaders say they had suspected since at least 2006 that the FBI was trying to infiltrate the Islamic Center and other Muslim organizations.

Some community leaders, worried that they were being watched, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI in 2006 seeking surveillance records on themselves. They are still engaged in litigation over the request, said Shakeel Syed, executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.

"We suspected this was happening," said Syed, who suspects his home and office phones are wired. "What these guys have done is create an environment where every person begins to suspect the other and with the infighting and inward suspicion, the community becomes it's own victim."

A spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles bureau, Lourdes Arocho, had no comment.

Former FBI agents, however, said that although the law places almost no constraints on the use of informants, the agency takes sending an informant into a mosque very seriously and imposes a higher threshold for such requests.

Agents would have to have credible and specific information about criminal activity inside a mosque or being committed by a mosque member before sending a plant in, said Steven Pomerantz, former assistant director and chief of counterterrorism for the FBI.

Such a request would also be approved by the highest-ranking agency officials, former agents said.

"You just wouldn't go sending informants willy nilly into mosques just to determine what was going on," Pomerantz said. "You have to have some articulable reason or basis to do that."

[erelvenewmeva]

Washington Post article - Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates mosque

[erelvenewmeva]

I feel really sorry for the genuine white returnee's but I think they should realize the mess the world is in and I hope they'll understand...

[erelvenewmeva]

May Allah (SWT) continue to protect our Ulema & our Masjids.
.......................

Ps - brother Pluto, apologies for derailing the thread, but I just have to ask now, as to where (book/bayaan/web?) you're getting the information for your signature from. The signature itself is only a few lines, but , these lines just linger on your mind throughout the day & I would love to know more.

& bhai, HCY, please visit, http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/show...l=1#post555567

[erelvenewmeva]

Brother Pluto, and keep up the good work.

[wp6Eg2Fm]

Brother Pluto If You don't mind can I use Your awesome signatures to share them with my friends i.e. Copy Paste.

[erelvenewmeva]

Brother Pluto If You don't mind can I use Your awesome signatures to share them with my friends i.e. Copy Paste.

Please do and none of them are mine, everything belongs to Allah SWT. I also suggest download Opera browser and there's a feature in there Opera Notes, if you find anything interesting on the net, like any text or anything, all you've to do is select that specific text and click on 'Copy to Notes' & if you do that than you can access those notes from anywhere in the world. Just remember to enable Opera Link before you do that. Cool, no? I don't think other browsers have this & this isn't an extension, its built in the browser.

[erelvenewmeva]

More of a reason to stick to scholar with ijaza and more of a reason why the salafist and non tracitionalist should be treated with a pinch of salt or suspicion.

Isn't that news disturbing on so many levels? Now, you really can't trust no one these days...

[wp6Eg2Fm]

Please do and none of them are mine, everything belongs to Allah SWT. ]

bro

if you do that than you can access those notes from anywhere in the world. I
also suggest download Opera browser and there's a feature in there Opera Notes, if you find anything interesting on the net, like any text or any ithing, all you've to do is select that specific text and click on 'Copy to Notes' &Just remember to enable Opera Link before you do that. Cool, no? I don't think other browsers have this & this isn't an extension, its built in the browser. Can't get You bro hw cn u access it world wide,can You elaborate more on it?

[wp6Eg2Fm]

http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/show...arching-Shaykh

Brother Pluto u may help som1 in the above link.

[erelvenewmeva]

bro
Can't get You bro hw cn u access it world wide,can You elaborate more on it?

When you install opera on your pc or phone, you can at the same time create an opera account, when you create that, you can enable opera link, now what OpLnk does is that when you bookmark a website or create notes (opera notes) it automatically copies / sync's those things in the cloud / opera servers, now if you want to access those from a different pc or phone, all you need to is sign in your opera account my.opera.com, click on opera link and voila! you can access those bookmarks, notes, history, speed dials and stuff from that link...see, google has a similar service called google bookmarks which works via google chrome but trust me, that isn't half good as opera link, also it doesn't do notes, speed dials, history and stuff, & google does not have its own mobile browser (I think) where as opera has (opera mobile + opera mini) so its way better than that.

[erelvenewmeva]

When you install opera on your pc or phone, you can at the same time create an opera account, when you create that, you can enable opera link, now what OpLnk does is that when you bookmark a website or create notes (opera notes) it automatically copies / sync's those things in the cloud / opera servers, now if you want to access those from a different pc or phone, all you need to is sign in your opera account my.opera.com, click on opera link and voila! you can access those bookmarks, notes, history, speed dials and stuff from that link...see, google has a similar service called google bookmarks which works via google chrome but trust me, that isn't half good as opera link, also it doesn't do notes, speed dials, history and stuff, & google does not have its own mobile browser (I think) where as opera has (opera mobile + opera mini) so its way better than that.

http://www.opera.com/link/start/

[erelvenewmeva]

Whats the word for 'Move forward by leaps and bounds' ??