More Info Emerges About NYPD Spying On Brooklyn Mosques

Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman‘s forthcoming book, Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America, exposes more details about the NYPD’s surveillance of muslims in New York City, including documents describing informants at different locations in Brooklyn and across the city.

Designating entire mosques as terrorist organizations allowed the NYPD, with no evidence of criminal activity, to legally record services and spy on members of mosques for years at a time, Apuzzo and Goldman write.

The article says the NYPD’s approach to investigating potential terrorist threats. When the NYPD could not convince the FBI to bug the mosques (as the FBI’s counterterrorism special agent Amy Jo Lyons felt that went against federal law), informants carried recording devices into the locations targeted by the NYPD’s Terrorist Enterprise Investigations (TEIs).

The FBI and NYPD differed in the case of Mohammad Elshinawy as well. The article says that after several months of investigating Elshinawy, a teacher and lecturer at mosques in Brooklyn suspected of recruiting followers “to wage violent jihad overseas,” the FBI closed their case without charges. The NYPD continued investigating him for at least four years, even recording his wedding day. Elshinawy is now part of an ACLU lawsuit against the NYPD.

While no locations in our immediate area were mentioned in the article, this is certainly a concern for our muslim neighbors who may worship in Bay Ridge and Boerum Hill. More information on the NYPD’s TEIs in Brooklyn and other boroughs can be found in the book when it comes out September 3.