New York, September 07: Recent documents show that the New York Police Department has been secretly watching hundreds of Muslims in mosques, restaurants and social groups in the so-called hunt for terrorists.
Hundreds of pages of internal police documents recently obtained by The Associated Press have revealed that police carried out an undercover effort that focused on over 250 mosques in New York and New Jersey and kept a close watch on hundreds of more places where Muslims frequented.
According to the records, plainclothes officers and informants were dispatched by a secret team known as the Demographics Unit into Muslim communities to prepare daily reports from their positions labeled as “listening posts.”
The informants known as “rakers” were also tasked with identifying mosques that needed more scrutiny dubbed “the mosques of concern,” and then secret officers were sent there.
The anti-Muslim effort was reportedly funded by the federal government and was supported by the CIA.
The New York police also kept watch over seven Muslim student associations defined in the documents as “a university-based student group, with an Islamic focus, involved with religious and political activities.”
Several Muslim civil rights groups as well as a New York Congresswoman have asked the US Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the issue described by critics as racial profiling.
The secret effort contradicts a report by the city’s mayor Michael Bloomberg that said New York police did not consider religion in its policing.
——Agencies