"Moro Said, the Egyptian-born limousine driver picked up on prostitution charges, provided a similar account of what happened to him the month before Mr. Abrahimi's arrest. Mr. Said, 57, said he was driving in Flushing when he pulled over because he thought a woman needed directions. The woman was an undercover police officer, and Mr. Said was arrested and brought to central booking in Queens.
"Mr. Said expected to be brought before a judge, when officers led him out of a holding cell. He found himself in a small room, where a police officer offered to make his case go away. "If you can help us, everything will be O.K.," Mr. Said recalled the man as saying. When Mr. Said asked what was wanted in return, "He says, 'You just go to
the mosque and the cafe and just say to us if somebody is talking about anything, anything suspicious.' "...... He said that when a detective called him about a week later to schedule a meeting, he declined, and "then I hang up.""I don't want to be a spy on anybody," Mr. Said said in a phone interview. "I hate spying."
I'm one of the Muslims the NYPD spied on: Haliscelik
Not surprisingly, Kahraman Haliscelik, New York City based Turkish journalist, shared his story about his surveillance by the NYPD.
Writing in the Epoch Times under the above title, Haliscelik said:
"On September 26, 2007, long before the surveillance program was public knowledge, I received a phone call from a blocked number. The voice on the other side identified himself as a detective from the NYPD anti-terrorism unit. He and another detective, from the FBI's weapons of mass destruction unit, wanted to meet with me in person, and they wanted to meet within 30 minutes. It was an urgent matter.
"The detectives asked me more questions--about Turkey, Islam, the Turkish-American community in New York, and whether I knew people here who could be al-Qaida sympathizers. By the end of our meeting, the detectives recognized that my case was "dead."
Haliscelik went on to say that at first, I thought my case had nothing to do with spying on Muslims, but as I heard more and more stories from others who had had similar experiences, I became convinced that surveillance was being conducted indiscriminately on thousands of other Muslims. When I write an e-mail message today, I do so with full awareness that a stranger who is very suspicious of me is reading it. I feel sorry for the person surveilling my messages, since he or she has the job of a robot, deciphering nonexistent codes in my e-mails rather than having real conversations with other humans.
But I feel even more sorry for Muslim-Americans, Haliscelik said adding: "When your own government treats you as a criminal, where can you find justice? Had I not been Muslim, would that meeting with the cops ever have taken place? Did our conversation make America safer? Would a professional bomb-maker ever use e-mail to buy fertilizer? And, why would anybody's religion matter? Because terrorism has no religion, and religion has no terrorism."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
