FBI coerces Muslim community members to become informants under threat

Evidence

The story of Foad Farahi illustrates this practice. Farahi, an imam of Iranian descent, came to the United States in 1994 with a student visa and later applied for political asylum. After 9/11, the FBI approached him numerous times, asking him to become an informant and to spy on his community. He consistently refused, not wanting to be an agent of the state within his community. At his asylum hearing, law enforcement agents met him in court and told him that they had evidence demonstrating that he had supported a terrorist group. They gave him a choice: drop his case and leave the United States voluntarily or be charged as a terrorist. Farahi first opted for voluntary departure, no doubt frightened at the prospects of being “disappeared” like so many other Muslim men. Later, when he realized that the state had no case against him, he decided to fight. Despite repeated requests, the state refused to share information about the terrorism allegations with Farahi or his lawyer so that they might mount a defense. Eventually, Farahi’s voluntary departure order was overturned and his asylum case was to be reopened. Others who were not as brave as Farahi—or, perhaps, who had more to lose—succumbed to state pressure. As Under the Radar shows, the law enforcement community routinely uses threats based on little or no evidence to coerce people to cooperate in the war on terror and become snitches—or face the state’s reprisal. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 563

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance of the informant/spying coercion dynamics — connects to surveillance-of-community literature and Aziz’s policing belief analysis. — connects to: FBI coerced Muslim community members into informing using fabricated threats — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 563; The FBI coerced an imam to inform by threatening fabricated terrorist charges — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 575; FBI informants manufactured terror plots targeting marginalized Muslim converts (+2 more)
• SHARE: For anyone studying counterterror informant recruitment: the explicit ‘become an informant or face false terrorism charges’ ultimatum pattern.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 563

Broader Connections

• The FBI coerced an imam to inform by threatening fabricated terrorist charges #exemplifies (1.00) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 575
• State coercion pressured Muslims to become informants or face false charges #corroborates (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 575
• FBI informants manufactured terror plots targeting marginalized Muslim converts #expands (0.80)
• FBI entrapment targets poor, vulnerable Black men near mosques #expands (0.72)